http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=255903

rinceWind has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I read with interest the thread "Always on top" with Win32 and Tk. However, what I want to do is different - I don't want a top level window on top all of the time. From a callback, I want to make a pre-existing window to pop up and bring itself to the front.

I think the answer lies in the toplevel window taking focus, but I can't find this in the documentation.

The platform is X-window on Solaris.

Any clues? Thanks in advance.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to bring a Tk window to the top
by converter (Priest) on May 06, 2003 at 16:53 UTC

    If the toplevel hasn't been mapped yet or has been withdrawn you'll want to invoke the deiconfiy method to make sure the window is mapped in de-iconified form, and then the raise method to bring the window to the top of the stacking order. The Tk::Widget and Tk::Wm man pages should be helpful.

    This quickie demo should give you a good start: 

    use Tk;
$mw = tkinit;
$t = $mw->Toplevel;                           
$t->withdraw;
$t->Label(-text => "Testing...")->pack;
$t->Button(
    -text => "Withdraw",
    -command => sub {$t->withdraw},
)->pack;
$mw->Button(
    -text => 'Test',
    -command => sub {
        $_->deiconify, $_->raise for $t;
    },
)->pack;                    
MainLoop;

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Re: How to bring a Tk window to the top
by perlplexer (Hermit) on May 06, 2003 at 15:31 UTC
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Re: How to bring a Tk window to the top
by LD2 (Curate) on May 06, 2003 at 15:29 UTC
    this documentation may help a bit...
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Re: How to bring a Tk window to the top
by zakb (Pilgrim) on May 06, 2003 at 15:33 UTC

    This is a bit of a guess, but the Tk::Wm POD mentions a focus method.

    Maybe $toplevel->focus will work?

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Re: How to bring a Tk window to the top
by Necos (Friar) on May 06, 2003 at 23:04 UTC
    How come no one has mentioned the focusForce() method? The raise() method will bring a window to the foreground, but another window may have focus. focusForce will force a window to take the focus. Of course, this is not always nice, but that is what rinceWind wants. (:

    Hope that helps some,

    Theodore Charles III
    Network Administrator
    Los Angeles Senior High
    email->secon_kun@hotmail.com
    perl -e "map{print++$_}split//,Mdbnr;"
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      From the Tk::focus POD: 

             $widget->focusForce
           Sets the focus of $widget's display to $widget, even if the
+ appli-
           cation doesn't currently have the input focus for the displ
+ay.
           This command should be used sparingly, if at all.  In norma
+l usage,
           an application should not claim the focus for itself;  inst
+ead, it
           should wait for the window manager to give it the focus.

      [download]

      I've found only one case where focusForce was required to get focus back to one of my windows, and that was after a call to getOpenFile from a composite widget. I'm still not sure if focusForce was required because of something I was doing wrong or a focus bug introduced by getOpenFile (I suspect the former).

      If raising a window doesn't cause the window manager to give it focus, then $widget->focus should be sufficient.

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