The rest of my GUI is a pack geometry. how can i mix pack and grid?

You don't. You pack a frame, then put a grid inside the frame. Then you can pack the combined frame with the rest of the items in the outer window/frame.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

That being said, merlyn is right. The grid geometry manager is better suited for such a layout.

davidj

The problem with the nested frames is that the widgets won't necessarily be aligned in the other direction. Hence, the grid manager.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

You are correct about that. However, before I was turned on to the grid and form geometry managers, I was able (with some difficulty and complexity) to get fairly decent grid layouts using pack. By all means, it is not the way to go and grid/form are the best options.

davidj

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Tk;

my $mw = MainWindow->new;
my $top_frame = $mw->Frame()->pack(-side => "top");
my $bot_frame = $mw->Frame()->pack(-side => "top");

$top_frame->Button(-text => "A",)->pack(-side => "left");
$top_frame->Button(-text => "B",)->pack(-side => "left");
$bot_frame->Button(-text => "C",)->pack(-side => "left");
$bot_frame->Button(-text => "D",)->pack(-side => "left");

MainLoop;
[download]

Maybe closer to your needs...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Tk;

my $mw = MainWindow->new;

for (["A","B"],["C","D"],["E","F"],["G","H"])
{
    my $frame = $mw->Frame()->pack(-side => "top");
    $frame->Button(-text => "$_->[0]",)->pack(-side => "left");
    $frame->Button(-text => "$_->[1]",)->pack(-side => "left");
}

MainLoop;
[download]

---

-- All code is 100% tested and functional unless otherwise noted.

I tend to use grid cells for columns that I want to line up, and frames with pack if a cell needs to contain multiple items that don't line up (with anything outside the cell).

As an example of getting the best out of grid, see the RPN calculator tutorial on the Tk wiki.

my $topframe = $mainWindow->Frame;
$topframe->pack(-expand => 'x', -fill => 1);

my $leftframe = $topframe->Frame;
$leftframe->pack(-side => 'left', -expand => 'x', -fill =>1);
my $rightframe = $topframe->Frame;
$rightframe->pack(-side => 'left', -expand => 'x', -fill =>1);
[download]

With this approach vertical alignment of the widgets in the frames could be difficult. Here's a hack to use pack() with helper frames to form a gridded structure.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use List::Util qw(max);
use POSIX qw(ceil);
use Tk;

my $mw = new MainWindow();

my @fields = ("Name", "Street", "Postal code", "City");

my @l;
for (@fields) {
    my $f = $mw->Frame->pack(-fill => "x");
    my $l = $f->Label(-text => $_, -anchor => "w")->pack(-side => "lef
+t");
    push @l, $l;
    my $e = $f->Entry->pack;
}

my $maxwidth = max map { $_->reqwidth } @l;
my $fontwidth0 = $mw->fontMeasure($l[0]->cget("-font"), "0");
my $maxwidth_chars = ceil($maxwidth / $fontwidth0);

for (@l) {
    $_->configure(-width => $maxwidth_chars);
}
MainLoop;
[download]

The hack is to set the -width option of the labels to get a uniform width for the left column. In the sample script above this is done dynamically by extracting the width of the largest label. Unfortunately specification of widths is done in characters, but the reqwidth() method returns pixels, so an additional conversion is necessary.