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Python Tkinter Text Widget

In this tutorial, we will cover the Tkinter Text widget in Python. If you want a text-editor in your desktop application then you can use the Tkinter Text widget.

  • The text widget is used to provide a multiline textbox (input box) because in Tkinter single-line textbox is provided using Entry widget.

  • You can use various styles and attributes with the Text widget.

  • You can also use marks and tabs in the Text widget to locate the specific sections of the text.

  • Media files like images and links can also be inserted in the Text Widget.

  • There are some variety of applications where you need multiline text like sending messages or taking long inputs from users, or to show editable long format text content in application, etc. use cases are fulfilled by this widget.

  • Thus in order to show textual information, we will use the Text widget.

Tkinter Text Widget

The syntax of the Text widget is given below:

W = Text(master, options)   

In the above syntax, the master parameter denotes the parent window. You can use many options to configure the text editor and these options are written as comma-separated key-value pairs.

Tkinter Text Widget Options:

Following are the various options used with Text widgets:

Name of the option Description
bd This option represents the border width of the widget.
bg This option indicates the background color of the widget.
exportselection This option is used to export the selected text in the selection of the window manager. If you do not want to export the text then you can set the value of this option to 0.
cursor This option will convert the mouse pointer to the specified cursor type and it can be set to an arrow, dot, etc.
font This option is used to indicate the font type of the text.
fg This option indicates the text color of the widget
height This option indicates the vertical dimension of the widget and it is mainly in the number of lines.
highlightbackground This option indicates the highlightcolor at the time when the widget isn't under the focus.
higlightthickness This option is used to indicate the thickness of the highlight. The default value of this option is 1.
highlightcolor This option indicates the color of the focus highlight when the widget is under the focus.
insertbackground This option is used to represent the color of the insertion cursor.
padx This option indicates the horizontal padding of the widget.
pady This option indicates the vertical padding of the widget.
relief This option indicates the type of the border of the widget. The default value of this option is SUNKEN.
state If the value of this option is set to DISABLED then the widget becomes unresponsive to mouse and keyboard
tabs This option is used to control how the tab character is used for the positioning of the text
width This option represents the width of the widget and this is in characters.
wrap To wrap wider lines into multiple lines this option is used. The default value of this option is CHAR which breaks the line which gets too wider at any character
xscrollcommand If you want to make the Text widget horizontally scrollable, then you can set this option to the set() method of Scrollbar widget
yscrollcommand If you want to make the Text widget vertically scrollable, then you can set this option to the set() method of Scrollbar widget
spacing1 This option indicates the vertical space to insert above each line of the text.
spacing2 This option is used to specify how much extra vertical space to add between displayed lines of text when a logical line wraps. The default value of this option is 0
spacing3 This option indicates the vertical space to insert below each line of the text.
selectbackground This option indicates the background color of the selected text.
selectborderwidth This option indicates the width of the border around the selected text.
insertofftime This option represents the time amount in Milliseconds and during this time the insertion cursor is off in the blink cycle
insertontime This option represents the time amount in Milliseconds and during this time the insertion cursor is on in the blink cycle
insertborderwidth In order to represent the width of the border around the cursor, we use this option. The default value of this option is 0.

Tkinter Text Widget Methods:

Some methods used with the text widget are given below:

Method Description
index(index) This method is used to get the specified index.
see(index) This method returns true or false on the basis that if the string is visible or not at the specified index.
insert(index,string) This method is used to insert a string at the specified index.
get(startindex,endindex) This method returns the characters in the specified range
delete(startindex,endindex) This method deletes the characters in the specified range

Methods for Tag Handling

Mainly tags are used to configure different areas of the text widget separately. Tag is basically the name given to separate areas of the text. Some Methods for handling tags are given below:

  • tag_config()

    To configure the properties of the tag this method will be used.

  • tag_add(tagname, startindex, endindex)

    This method is mainly used to tag the string that is present at the specified index.

  • tag_delete(tagname)

    This method is mainly used to delete the specified tag.

  • tag_remove(tagname, startindex, endindex)

    To remove the tag from the specified range this method is used.

Methods for Mark Handling

In a given text widget in order to bookmark specified positions between the characters Mark is used. Some methods for the same are given below:

  • index(mark)

    This method is mainly used to get the index of the mark specified.

  • mark_names()

    This method is used to get all the names of the mark in the range in the text widget.

  • mark_gravity(mark, gravity)

    To get the gravity of the given mark this method will be used.

  • mark_set(mark, index)

    This method is used to inform the new position of the given mark.

  • mark_unset(mark)

    In order to remove the given mark from the text this method will be used.

Tkinter Text Widget Example

Let us discuss a basic example for the text widget. The code snippet for the example of the text widget is given below:

import tkinter as tk 
from tkinter import *

win = Tk() 

#to specify size of window. 
win.geometry("250x170") 

# To Create a text widget and specify size. 
T = Text(win, height = 6, width = 53) 

# TO Create label 
l = Label(win, text = "Quote for the Day") 
l.config(font =("Courier", 14)) 

Quote = """Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"""

# Create a button for the next text. 
b1 = Button(win, text = "Next", ) 

# Create an Exit button. 
b2 = Button(win, text = "Exit", 
			command = win.destroy) 

l.pack() 
T.pack() 
b1.pack() 
b2.pack() 

# Insert the Quote 
T.insert(tk.END, Quote) 

tk.mainloop() 

The output for the code snippet given above is as follows:


Tkinter Text widget example

If you want to destroy this window just click on the Exit button.

Summary:

In this tutorial, we learned Tkinter Text widget which is used when we want to add a textarea in our application for taking large user inputs.



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