Make a new window open below the blinking cursor using Tkinter

Question

Normally we get the coordinates and open a new window there. What I need is to open a window just below the blinking cursor of a Tkinter text-box. I am lost as to how to get the coordinates of that in terms of height and width pixels in the screen.

PM 2Ring PM 2Ring · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-12T12:04:10

You need to get the current position of the Text widget relative to the screen and also the bounding box of the widget's insertion cursor, which is relative to the widget.

If an element of a Text widget isn't currently visible its bounding box is None; in that case you need to scroll the text using the .see method to make the element visible.

This program was written for Python 2, so if you are running it on Python 3 you need to change the import statement to import tkinter as tk.

#!/usr/bin/env python

''' Text Location Demo
    Open a Tkinter window just under the location of the insertion cursor 
    of a Text widget.

    See http://stackoverflow.com/q/34237313/4014959

    Written by PM 2Ring 2015.12.12
'''

import Tkinter as tk

#Some random text to display in the Text widget
lorem_ipsum = '''Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing
elit. Aenean lacinia tortor quis quam vehicula semper. Curabitur
faucibus, purus a egestas bibendum, velit metus hendrerit nulla, non
lobortis dolor mi in dolor. Aliquam ultrices felis sit amet dolor
gravida, id ullamcorper odio rutrum. Fusce consectetur tempor nibh, non
dictum dolor dictum nec. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Morbi laoreet
consequat metus, at lacinia nisl suscipit id. Quisque vitae sodales
velit, a lobortis nisl. Praesent varius convallis efficitur. Vivamus
fringilla at risus nec viverra. Proin suscipit, lorem sed laoreet
ultricies, velit massa ornare nunc, vel egestas nibh ex vitae leo.'''

lorem_ipsum = lorem_ipsum.replace('\n', ' ')

class TextLocationDemo(object):
    ''' Text widget cursor location demo '''
    def __init__(self):
        root = tk.Tk()
        root.title("Text Location Demo")

        tk.Button(root, text="Show cursor location", 
            command=self.location_cb).pack()

        # Create a Text widget, with word wrapping
        self.textwidget = tw = tk.Text(root, wrap=tk.WORD)
        tw.pack()
        tw.insert(tk.END, lorem_ipsum)

        root.mainloop()

    def alert(self, geometry, msg):
        ''' Display `msg` in an Alert with given geometry,
            which is a tuple of (width, height, ox, oy)
        '''
        top = tk.Toplevel()
        # widget geometry parameter must be given in X windows format
        top.geometry("%dx%d%+d%+d" % geometry)

        msg = tk.Message(top, text=msg, width=geometry[0])
        msg.pack()

        button = tk.Button(top, text="Ok", command=top.destroy)
        button.pack()

    def location_cb(self):
        ''' Determine the location of the insertion cursor
            and display it in a window just under that location
        '''
        w = self.textwidget

        # Get the Text widget's current location
        pos_x, pos_y = w.winfo_rootx(), w.winfo_rooty()

        # Get the bounding box of the insertion cursor
        cursor = tk.INSERT
        bbox = w.bbox(cursor)
        if bbox is None:
            print('Cursor is not currently visible. Scrolling...')
            w.see(cursor)
            bbox = w.bbox(cursor)

        bb_x, bb_y, bb_w, bb_h = bbox

        #Open a window just beneath the insertion cursor
        width = 200
        height = 80
        ox = pos_x + bb_x
        oy = pos_y + bb_y + bb_h
        s = 'Cursor: (%d, %d)' % (ox, oy)
        print(s)

        geometry = (width, height, ox, oy)
        self.alert(geometry, s)


TextLocationDemo()

Make a new window open below the blinking cursor using Tkinter

1 Answers