The Canvas Widget (Mastering Perl/Tk)

The Canvas widget is used mainly for drawing items such as arcs, lines, rectangles, circles, and so on, but you can also place text and other widgets inside a Canvas widget. Here are some examples of how you can use a Canvas widget:

Figure 9-1. Canvas widget

Each item you create in a Canvas widget is assigned a unique item ID, which is a positive integer. Using an item's ID is a common way of addressing individual Canvas items, but you can devise tag names and use them as well. All Canvas items can have bindings attached to them for easy interaction with the user.

9.1. Creating a Canvas

It's easiest to always use the Scrolled method to create a Canvas, unless you know for sure your Canvas is going to be a fixed size that will fit in the window:

$canvas = $mw->Canvas( [ option => values, ... ] )->pack( );
# or...
$canvas = $mw->Scrolled('Canvas', [ option => values, ... ])->pack( );

The first line creates just a Canvas and the second creates a Canvas with Scrollbars. (See Chapter 6, "The Scrollbar Widget" for more information on the Scrolled method.) To create a Canvas widget, use the desired parent widget to invoke the Canvas method and pass any initial options in with their values. The Canvas method returns a reference to the newly created Canvas widget.

Chapter 9. The Canvas Widget

Contents:

Figure 9-1. Canvas widget

9.1. Creating a Canvas