Theo_124 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to specify a font in a messageBox, but I can't figure out how to do this (or if it's even possible on Windows).

zentara posted some code here Re: How to get error/info/warning icons in perl /tk which appears to set a font, but it will not run on my machine. When I run zentara's code, I get this error

Tk::Error: bad option "-background": must be -default, -icon, -message
+, -parent,
 -title, or -type at C:/Perl/site/lib/Tk.pm line 318.

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I'm using Windows XP with ActiveState Perl 5.8.8 and I'm using Tk 804.028

Here is my simplified code which works... 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Tk;
   
my $mw=new MainWindow;

my $arial_font = $mw->fontCreate('normal_font',
                            -family => "Arial Unicode MS",
                            -size => "15", # point
                            );

my $mess .= "\nAre these two customers the same?";

my $response = $mw -> messageBox(
#                           -font    => 'normal_font',
                           -title   => "Duplicate customer codes detec
+ted",
                           -message => $mess,
                           -type    => 'yesno');

MainLoop;

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But when I take the # off the -font line, I get this error...

bad option "-font": must be -default, -icon, -message, -parent, -title
+, or -type
 at C:/Perl/site/lib/Tk.pm line 318.

[download]

Is it possible that the Tk in ActiveState Perl does not accept a -font variable for a messageBox while the Unix version does? Thank you very much for any suggestions.

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Re: Can't specify font in messageBox
by Sandy (Curate) on Apr 23, 2009 at 21:45 UTC
    I tried your code on a Unix machine (Solaris) and it worked just fine.

    I tried it on my Windows XP machine, and it did not work fine.

    Perhaps it is because Tk calls the native messageBox?? and Windows is more restrictive??

    Interesting note: According to the docs, -font is not a valid option for messageBox, so it suprises me that it works on Unix.

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      Thank you for confirming that it's not just me :)

      So the next interesting bit is that the widget demo uses a different font in their messageBoxes demo than I see with my code snippet (above). When I click their "See Code" button and look, they do not set the font at all. All of my experimenting is being done from Windows.

      So perhaps Windows grabs some kind of "default" font based on something... and uses THAT in the messageBox.

      I'll try changing the default font in my program and see if that changes the font in the messageBox...

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        I just tried changing the font for my test script using RefontTree to re-set the font on my whole program and it will not change the font in the messageBox.

        This is very strange because the widget demo DOES use a different font in the messageBox that it displays, but I can't figure out how. The widget demo never CHANGES the font that it uses in the messageBox, but it is a larger bolder font than the one that I always get.

        Here is my code that shows the ability to change the font for the whole rest of the program, but the messageBox is always the same

        use strict;
use warnings;
use Tk;
use Tk::FontDialog;

my $mw=new MainWindow;
$mw->Label(-text => "Test")->pack;
$mw->Button(-text => "Another test")->pack;
$mw->Button(-text => "Use Tk::FontDialog",
             -command => sub {
                 my $font = $mw->FontDialog->Show;
                 if (defined $font) {
                     $mw->RefontTree(-font => $font);
                 }
             })->pack;

my $mess .= "\nAre these two customers the same?";
$mw->Button(-text => "Test messageBox",
             -command => sub {
                 my $res = $mw -> messageBox(
                           -title   => "This is a test",
                           -message => $mess,
                           -type    => 'yesno');
                 }
             )->pack;

MainLoop;

        [download]

        Does anyone have any ideas here? Or what I could try?

        I'd give up, except for the fact that I KNOW it can be done because the widget demo shows it!

        Thank you for any tips or advice you might have for me

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