


message(n)             Tk Built-In Commands            message(n)


NAME
       message - Create and manipulate message widgets

SYNOPSIS
       (message                     widget-name                     ?options?)
       :anchor   :font     :highlightthickness :takefocus
       :background    :foreground    :padx     :text
       :borderwidth   :highlightbackground     :pady     :textvariable
       :cursor   :highlightcolor     :relief   :width

WIDGET-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
       Specifies  a non-negative integer value indicating desired aspect ratio
       for the text.  The aspect ratio is specified as 100*width/height.   100
       means  the  text  should  be  as wide as it is tall, 200 means the text
       should be twice as wide as it is tall, 50  means  the  text  should  be
       twice as tall as it is wide, and so on.  Used to choose line length for
       text if width option isn't specified.  Defaults to 150.  Specifies  how
       to  justify  lines  of  text.   Must  be one of left, center, or right.
       Defaults to left.  This option works together with the anchor,  aspect,
       padX,  padY,  and width options to provide a variety of arrangements of
       the text within the window.  The aspect and width options determine the
       amount  of  screen space needed to display the text.  The anchor, padX,
       and padY options determine where this  rectangular  area  is  displayed
       within  the widget's window, and the justify option determines how each
       line is displayed within that rectangular region.  For example, suppose
       anchor  is  e  and justify is left, and that the message window is much
       larger than needed for the text.  The the text will displayed  so  that
       the  left  edges  of  all  the  lines line up and the right edge of the
       longest line is padX from the right side of  the  window;   the  entire
       text block will be centered in the vertical span of the window.  Speci-
       fies the length of lines in the window.  The value may have any of  the
       forms  acceptable  to Tk_GetPixels.  If this option has a value greater
       than zero then the aspect option is ignored and the width option deter-
       mines  the  line length.  If this option has a value less than or equal
       to zero, then the aspect option determines the line length.


DESCRIPTION
       The message procedure creates a new window (given  by  the  widget-name
       argument)  and  makes  it  into  a message widget.  Additional options,
       described above, may be specified on  the  procedure  line  or  in  the
       option database to configure aspects of the message such as its colors,
       font, text, and initial relief.  The message procedure returns its wid-
       get-name  argument.   At the time this procedure is invoked, there must
       not exist a window named widget-name,  but  widget-name's  parent  must
       exist.

       A message is a widget that displays a textual string.  A message widget
       has three special features.  First, it breaks up its string into  lines
       in  order  to  produce  a  given aspect ratio for the window.  The line
       breaks are chosen at word boundaries wherever possible (if not  even  a
       single  word  would  fit  on a line, then the word will be split across
       lines).  Newline characters in the string will force line breaks;  they
       can be used, for example, to leave blank lines in the display.



STk                            3.1                              1





message(n)             Tk Built-In Commands            message(n)


       The  second feature of a message widget is justification.  The text may
       be displayed left-justified (each line starts at the left side  of  the
       window),  centered  on  a  line-by-line basis, or right-justified (each
       line ends at the right side of the window).

       The third feature of a message widget is that it handles control  char-
       acters  and  non-printing  characters  specially.   Tab  characters are
       replaced with enough blank space to line up  on  the  next  8-character
       boundary.  Newlines cause line breaks.  Other control characters (ASCII
       code less than 0x20) and characters not defined in the  font  are  dis-
       played as a four-character sequence \xhh where hh is the two-digit hex-
       adecimal number corresponding to the character.  In  the  unusual  case
       where   the   font   doesn't   contain   all   of   the  characters  in
       ``0123456789abcdef\x'' then control characters and undefined characters
       are not displayed at all.


WIDGET PROCEDURE
       The  message  procedure  creates a new STk procedure whose name is wid-
       get-name.  This procedure may be used to invoke various  operations  on
       the  widget.   It  has  the following general form: (widget-name option
       ?arg arg ...?)  Option and the args determine the exact behavior of the
       procedure.  The following procedures are possible for message widgets:

       (widget-name 'cget option)
              Returns  the  current value of the configuration option given by
              option.  Option may have any of the values accepted by the  mes-
              sage procedure.

       (widget-name 'configure ?option? ?value option value ...?)
              Query  or modify the configuration options of the widget.  If no
              option is specified, returns a list describing all of the avail-
              able  options for widget-name (see Tk_ConfigureInfo for informa-
              tion on the format of this list).  If option is  specified  with
              no  value,  then the procedure returns a list describing the one
              named option (this list will be identical to  the  corresponding
              sublist  of  the  value returned if no option is specified).  If
              one or more option-value pairs are specified, then the procedure
              modifies  the given widget option(s) to have the given value(s);
              in this case the procedure returns an empty string.  Option  may
              have any of the values accepted by the message procedure.


DEFAULT BINDINGS
       When  a  new message is created, it has no default event bindings: mes-
       sages are intended for output purposes only.


BUGS
       Tabs don't work very well with text that is  centered  or  right-justi-
       fied.  The most common result is that the line is justified wrong.






STk                            3.1                              2





message(n)             Tk Built-In Commands            message(n)


KEYWORDS
       message, widget























































STk                            3.1                              3


