The Perl/Tk LabEntry Mega-Widget (Mastering Perl/Tk)

5.3. The Perl/Tk LabEntry Mega-Widget

Perl/Tk provides special code that combines a Label with an arbitrary widget, so you can have LabArbitrary widgets. This is fully explained in Chapter 14, "Creating Custom Widgets in Pure Perl/Tk". Perhaps the most common of these labeled widgets is LabEntry. It's configured using standard options, and ordinary options such as -font are directed to the Entry subwidget. To configure the Label subwidget, use options such as -labelFont, -labelBackground, and so on.

There's a special option, -labelPack, that accepts a reference to a list of packer options and controls the relative geometry of the Label and Entry subwidgets. By default, the Label is packed on top of the Entry. If you prefer left-side packing, use -labelPack as in the example below. This example shows how to use a fixed-width font to create a column of aligned LabEntry widgets:

    foreach my $item (
      ['Copying', \$self->{file}],
      ['From', \$self->{from}],
      ['To', \$self->{to}],
      ['Bytes Copied', \$self->{bytes_msg}],
        ) {
        my $l = $item->[0] . ':';
        my $le = $cf_frame->LabEntry(
            -label        => ' ' x (13 - length $l) . $l,
            -labelPack    => [qw/-side left -anchor w/],
            -labelFont    => '9x15bold',
            -relief       => 'flat',
            -state        => 'disabled',
            -textvariable => $item->[1],
            -width        => 35,
        );
        $le->pack(qw/-fill x -expand 1/);
    }

Please refer to Chapter 14, "Creating Custom Widgets in Pure Perl/Tk" for a complete list of -label options.