Tk::Columns height and new line character

reaper9187 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Fellow monks,

I seek your wisdom on a particular issue with the Tk::Columns module. I have a large text file that i need to display in a tabular form and sort. I discovered this Tk::Columns module and I found it to be up to the task. However, I have two basic problems (both of which are closely related ) regarding the configuration of the table . First the code (with some sample data)


#! /usr/bin/perl

use Tk;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Tk::Columns;

my $l_MainWindow = Tk::MainWindow->new();
$l_MainWindow->geometry("800x500+0+0");

my $l_Columns = $l_MainWindow->Columns
   (
    
    '-command' => sub {printf ("Selected [%s]\n", join ('|', @_));},
    '-image' => $l_MainWindow->Pixmap ('-file' => 'mini-doc.xpm'),
    '-listforeground' => 'blue4',
    '-listbackground' => 'beige',    
    '-buttonbackground' => 'brown',
    '-buttonforeground' => 'white',
    '-selectmode' => 'extended',
    '-sort' => 'true',
   )->pack
   (
    '-expand' => 'true',
    '-fill' => 'both',
   );

my @columns_desc = ("Col A",      "Col B", "Col C",    "Col D", "Col E
+" );
$l_Columns->ColumnButton( -text => "$columns_desc[0]", -width => 10 );
$l_Columns->ColumnButton( -text => "$columns_desc[1]", -width => 10 );
$l_Columns->ColumnButton( -text => "$columns_desc[2]", -width => 10 );
$l_Columns->ColumnButton( -text => "$columns_desc[3]", -width => 10 );
+ 
$l_Columns->ColumnButton( -text => "$columns_desc[4]", -width => 10 );
+ 
 
    while (<DATA>)
       {
        chomp;
        $_ =~ s/[\r\n]*$//;
        $l_Columns->insert ('end', split());
       }

Tk::MainLoop();


__DATA__
drwxrwxrwx  2 nobody   nogroup       512 May  1 19:20 .
drwxrwxrwx  5 nobody   nogroup       512 Apr 30 01:14 ..
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      3774 Dec 31  1969 camel.ico
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      1888 Apr 29 15:19 camel_s.gif
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       218 Apr  8 12:11 checkbox.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      8272 Apr  8 12:11 client.xpm
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       538 May  1 19:23 columns.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       655 Apr  8 12:11 comboentry.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      2873 Apr  8 12:11 database.xpm
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      3205 Apr  8 12:11 iconcanvas.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      2711 Apr  8 12:11 mail.xpm
-rwxr--r--  1 nobody   nogroup       837 May  1 19:00 menustrip.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      8272 Apr  8 12:11 netclient.xpm
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       587 Apr  8 12:11 progressindicato
+r.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      7879 Apr  8 12:11 server.xpm
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       982 Apr  8 12:11 splitframe.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       919 Apr  8 12:11 tabbedform.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      2020 Apr 29 12:44 tabframe.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup      1239 Apr  8 12:11 tableedit.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup       156 Apr  8 12:11 test.dat
-rwxrwxrwx  1 dkw      nogroup         0 May  1 19:24 testfile.txt
[download]

Now, the problems :

1. How do I reconfigure the height of the rows ?. The text file is very large. Since the data is placed close to each other, the data looks crowded and messy. I want to increase the spacing to make it look much cleaner

2. How do i insert a new line character in one of the table entries.? Now, I have multiline entries in some rows e.g : "This is a \n sample \n text" (although I have not included such entries here). The moment it encounters such a value, it seems to trim out the new line characters and proceeds with printing the entry. HOw do i fix this ??

Thank you in advance..!

Comment on Tk::Columns height and new line character Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Tk::Columns height and new line character by zentara (Cardinal) on Jan 24, 2014 at 17:59 UTC
Try adding the -width option to your Columns object, like -width => 50. Experiment around at look thru the examples and docs. You can also use the old trick of adding spaces to the heads and tails of the column header names. :-) Right now, I can't understand what your \n problem is. Can you provide an example. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh	[reply]
Re: Tk::Columns height and new line character by reaper9187 (Scribe) on Jan 24, 2014 at 23:51 UTC
Thank you for your reply zentara The problem is actually easy to reproduce. Consider appending the following lines at the end of the code `$l_Columns->insert('end', { 'Col A' => "Sample Text A", 'Col B' => "This is a \n sample \n text ", 'Col C' =>"Sample Text \n C", 'Col D' =>"Sample Text \n D", 'Col E' =>"Sample Text \n E", + } );` [download] There are several such entries in the file. The observation : The newline character ( "\n" ) is removed and a multiline entry is printed as a single line which makes the entire data look too crowded. I have tried different options (assigning the string to a variable, arrays ,etc still it doesn't seem to work). I really like this module because of the options it provides ( clean output, sorting ,etc) . I'd really like to find a soln to this problem bcoz it gets really messy when you try and piece together different modules to achieve the desired tabular display with sorting etc. Help greatly appreciated.	[reply] [d/l]