Message and Entry

The Message and Entry widgets allow for display and input of simple text. Both are essentially functional subsets of the Text widget we’ll meet later; Text can do everything Message and Entry can, but not vice versa.

Message

The Message widget is simply a place to display text. Although the standard showinfo dialog we met earlier is perhaps a better way to display pop-up messages, Message splits up long strings automatically and flexibly, and can be embedded inside container widgets any time you need to add some read-only text to a display. Moreover, this widget sports more than a dozen configuration options that let you customize its appearance. Example 9-16 and Figure 9-21 illustrate Message basics; see a Tk or Tkinter reference for other options it supports.

A Message widget at work

Figure 9-21. A Message widget at work

Example 9-16. PP3E\Gui\tour\message.py

from Tkinter import *
msg = Message(text="Oh by the way, which one's Pink?")
msg.config(bg='pink', font=('times', 16, 'italic'))
msg.pack( )
mainloop( )

Entry

The Entry widget is a simple, single-line text input field. It is typically used for input fields in form-like dialogs, and anywhere else you need the user to type a value into a field of a larger display. Entry also supports advanced concepts such as scrolling, key bindings for editing, and text selections, but it’s simple to use in practice. Example 9-17 builds the ...

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