A tablelist is a multi-column listbox and tree widget, supporting a large number of options and widget subcommands. Here are just a few of them:
left,
right, and center. package require
tablelist_tile.Support for interactive cell editing with the aid of the Tk core and tile menubutton widgets was added in Tablelist version 5.3.
From the manual page Interactive Cell Editing Using the menubutton Widget:
The temporary embedded menubutton widget used for interactive cell editing will be created with explicitly set values for its-anchor,-indicatoron,-justify,-padx,-pady,-relief, and-textvariableoptions. In addition, a menu with its-tearoffoption set to0and an appropriate script as the value of its-postcommandoption is created and set as the value of the menubutton's-menuoption. ... You can use the script corresponding to the-editstartcommandtablelist configuration option to set any other options of the menubutton and/or its associated menu. You will, however, need this script in the first place for populating the menu, preferably with radiobutton entries. For every radiobutton entry added to the menu, the Tablelist implementation will make sure that its value (which can be specified by setting the entry's-valueor-labeloption) will be displayed in the menubutton as its text when the entry is selected. (...) For menu entries of types other than radiobutton (e.g., for command entries) it is the responsibility of the application to make sure that the selected entry's text will be shown in the menubutton (for example, with the aid of the menu entry's-commandoption).
From the manual page Interactive Cell Editing Using the tile menubutton Widget:
The temporary embedded tile menubutton widget used for interactive cell editing will be created with explicitly set values for its-styleand-textvariableoptions. In addition, ... (identical to the description above).
Menubuttons versus comboboxes:
-image (or -bitmap) option
(combined with -compound if both an image and text are
to be displayed).-command menu entry option it is easy to
specify a Tcl command to execute when the menu entry is invoked.
Similar functionality for comboboxes is highly dependent on the combobox
widget being used.-columnbreak menu entry option. (Unfortunately,
this feature is no longer supported on Mac OS X Aqua.)The following sample code snippets are taken from the latest version of
the demo script tileWidgets.tcl, as contained in the forthcomimg
Tablelist release 5.7:

set dir [file dirname [info script]]
. . .
#
# Create the images "checkedImg" and "uncheckedImg", as well as 16 images of
# names like "img#FF0000", displaying colors identified by names like "red"
#
source [file join $dir images.tcl]
. . .
$tbl columnconfigure 10 -name color -editable yes -editwindow ttk::menubutton \
-formatcommand emptyStr
. . .
proc editStartCmd {tbl row col text} {
set w [$tbl editwinpath]
switch [$tbl columncget $col -name] {
. . .
color {
#
# Populate the menu and make sure the menubutton will display the
# color name rather than $text, which is "", due to -formatcommand
#
set menu [$w cget -menu]
foreach name $::colorNames {
$menu add radiobutton -compound left \
-image img$::colors($name) -label $name
}
$menu entryconfigure 8 -columnbreak 1
return [$tbl cellcget $row,$col -text]
}
}
return $text
}
proc editEndCmd {tbl row col text} {
switch [$tbl columncget $col -name] {
. . .
color {
#
# Update the image contained in the cell
#
$tbl cellconfigure $row,$col -image img$::colors($text)
}
}
return $text
}
When a tablelist is used as a tree widget, one of its columns (specified
by the -treecolumn option) will display the tree
hierarchy with the aid of indentations and expand/collapse controls.
The look & feel of that column is controlled by the
-treestyle option, which includes, among others, the
images used for displaying the expand/collapse controls, the indentation
width, and whether expand/collapse controls and indentations are to be
protected when selecting a row or cell. The Tablelist package chooses
the correct default style depending on the windowing system, operating system
version, and tile theme. The number of supported tree styles has
increased from 16 in Tablelist 5.0 to 25 in Tablelist 5.6:
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aqua |
gtk |
newWave |
ubuntu |
mint |
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baghira |
phase |
oxygen1 |
oxygen2 |
klearlooks |
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winnative |
winxpBlue |
winxpOlive |
winxpSilver |
plastik |
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vistaAero |
vistaClassic |
win7Aero |
win7Classic |
plastique |
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ambiance |
dust |
dustSand |
radiance |
adwaita |
In the forthcoming Tablelist version 5.7, the tree styles
ubuntu and mint have been adapted to
the Ubuntu Linux release 12.04 and Linux Mint release 13, respectively.
The screenshots above show these updated versions.
The move subcommand was extended in Tablelist release
5.2 to support moving an item outside its parent programmatically, and
version 5.3 added support for performing this interactively, too. The
subcommand now has two forms:
pathName move sourceIndex targetIndex
pathName move sourceIndex targetParentNodeIndex targetChildIndex- The first form of the command moves the item indicated by
sourceIndexjust before the one given bytargetIndexif the tablelist's state is notdisabled. IftargetIndexequals the nunber of items or is specified asendthen the source item is moved after the last one. The item specified bytargetIndexmust have the same parent as the one given bysourceIndex, or else it must be the item just below the last descendant of the source node's parent.The command's second form moves the item indicated by
sourceIndexjust before the node having the parent indicated bytargetParentNodeIndexand the indextargetChildIndexin the parent's list of children if the tablelist's state is notdisabled.targetChildIndexmust be a number orend; if it equals the number of children of the target parent node or is specified asendthen the source item is moved after the target parent node's last child.Both forms of the command preserve the node hierarchy under the source item, by moving its descendants accordingly. The return value is an empty string.
According to this description, the interactive row move operation now supports dragging an item outside its parent and dropping it under another item as a child. During this local drag & drop, the new item position (if any) is visualized with the aid of a gap placed before the target row or a bar placed inside the latter (depending on the current mouse position), indicating whether the source item would be moved before this row or become a child of it.
Depending on the current mouse position during the local drag & drop,
there can be a corresponding potential target row or not. For instance,
a tree item cannot become a sibling of one of its descendants, and not all
items might be allowed to have children or to become top-level ones. To
decide whether the row corresponding to the y-coordinate of the current mouse
position represents a valid potential target, the Tablelist code first checks
whether moving the source item before that row or making it a child of the
latter is allowed from the point of view of the general tree structure.
If this is the case and the move operation would change the source item's
parent, then the command specified by the
-acceptchildcommand configuration option (introduced in
Tablelist 5.3) is used to decide whether to allow to move the dragged item to
the intended target position: If the value of this option is an empty
string then the move operation is allowed (and the target position is
visualized as described above). Otherwise the command is concatenated
with the name of the tablelist widget, the node index of the would-be new
parent node, and the row index of the dragged item, the resulting script is
evaluated in the global scope, and the return value (which must be a boolean)
will determine whether to allow to move the source item to the current mouse
position.
The following example is a slightly modified and extended version of the
demo script dirViewer_tile.tcl:

proc displayContents dir {
#
# Create a scrolled tablelist widget with 3 dynamic-
# width columns and interactive sort capability
#
set tf .tf
ttk::frame $tf -class ScrollArea
set tbl $tf.tbl
set vsb $tf.vsb
set hsb $tf.hsb
tablelist::tablelist $tbl \
-columns {0 "Name" left
0 "Size" right
0 "Date Modified" left} \
-expandcommand expandCmd -collapsecommand collapseCmd \
-xscrollcommand [list $hsb set] -yscrollcommand [list $vsb set] \
-movablecolumns no -showseparators yes -height 18 -width 80 \
-acceptchildcommand acceptChildCmd -movablerows true -selectmode single
. . .
#
# Populate the tablelist with the contents of the given directory
#
$tbl sortbycolumn 0
putContents $dir $tbl root
}
The procedure acceptChildCmd, specified as the value
of the -acceptchildcommand configuration option, makes
sure that the top-level items remain restricted to the ones displaying
volumes and only directories will accept child items:
proc acceptChildCmd {tbl targetParentNodeIdx sourceRow} {
if {[string compare $targetParentNodeIdx "root"] == 0} {
#
# Allow only volumes as top-level items
#
return [expr {[$tbl depth $sourceRow] == 1}]
} else {
#
# Allow only directories as parent items
#
return [$tbl hasrowattrib $targetParentNodeIdx pathName]
}
}
The searchcolumn subcommand was added in Tablelist
version 5.3. It is often used together with the
-populatecommand configuration option, introduced in
Tablelist version 5.4. Here is a partly abbreviated version of the
subcommand's description in the reference manual:
pathName searchcolumn columnIndex pattern ?options?- This subcommand searches the elements of the column given by
columnIndexto see if one of them matchespattern. If a match is found, the row index of the first matching element is returned as result (unless the option-allis specified). If not, the return value is-1. One or more of the following options may be specified to control the search:
-allChanges the result to be the list of all matching row indices, which will be in numeric order (or in reverse numeric order when used with the -backwardsoption).
-backwardsThe search will proceed backward through the given column's elements.
-check commandSpecifies an additional condition to be fulfilled by the matching elements. ... This option enables you to pass arbitrary additional matching criteria to the searching process.
-descendSearch the elements of the specified column in all descendants of the tree node given by the -parentoption. ...
-exactThe matching element(s) must be identical to the literal string pattern.
-formattedExamine the formatted versions of the elements rather than the internal cell values.
-globTreat patternas a glob-style pattern and match it against the elements using the same rules as thestring matchcommand.
-nocaseCauses comparisons to be handled in a case-insensitive manner. Has no effect if combined with the -numericoption.
-notThis option negates the sense of the match, ...
-numericThe elements are to be compared to patternas integer or floating-point values, using the==comparison operator. This option is only meaningful when used with-exact.
-parent nodeIndexThis option restricts the search to the children (or descendants, when used with -descend) of the tree node given bynodeIndex. The default parent isroot.
-regexpTreat patternas a regular expression and match it against the elements using the rules described in there_syntaxreference page.
-start indexThe elements of the specified column are to be searched (forwards or backwards) starting at the row given by index. This option makes it easy to provide incremental search.If all matching style options
-exact,-glob, and-regexpare omitted then the matching style defaults to-glob. If more than one of them is specified, the last matching style given takes precedence.Before examining the children (or descendants, when used with the
-descendoption) of a row whose children have not been inserted yet, the command specified as the value of the-populatecommandoption (if any) is automatically concatenated with the name of the tablelist widget and the row index, and the resulting script is evaluated in the global scope. This enables you to insert the children on demand, just before searching them for the specified pattern.
The following example is an extended version of the demo script
dirViewer_tile.tcl. The pop-up menu within the tablelist
widget displaying the contents of a directory has a second command entry
Search for Pattern..., which opens a dialog for entering the data
needed for building the arguments to be passed to the
searchcolumn subcommand:

proc displayContents dir {
#
# Create a scrolled tablelist widget with 3 dynamic-
# width columns and interactive sort capability
#
set tf .tf
ttk::frame $tf -class ScrollArea
set tbl $tf.tbl
set vsb $tf.vsb
set hsb $tf.hsb
tablelist::tablelist $tbl \
-columns {0 "Name" left
0 "Size" right
0 "Date Modified" left} \
-expandcommand expandCmd -collapsecommand collapseCmd \
-xscrollcommand [list $hsb set] -yscrollcommand [list $vsb set] \
-movablecolumns no -showseparators yes -height 18 -width 80 \
-populatecommand populateCmd
. . .
#
# Create a pop-up menu with 2 command entries; bind the script
# associated with its first entry to the <Double-1> event, too
#
set menu .menu
menu $menu -tearoff no
foreach {label cmd} {"Display Contents" putContentsOfSelFolder
"Search for Pattern..." openSearchDlgForSelFolder} {
$menu add command -label $label -command [list $cmd $tbl]
}
set bodyTag [$tbl bodytag]
bind $bodyTag <<Button3>> [bind TablelistBody <Button-1>]
bind $bodyTag <<Button3>> +[bind TablelistBody <ButtonRelease-1>]
bind $bodyTag <<Button3>> +[list postPopupMenu %X %Y]
bind $bodyTag <Double-1> [list putContentsOfSelFolder $tbl]
. . .
#
# Populate the tablelist with the contents of the given directory
#
$tbl sortbycolumn 0
putContents $dir $tbl root
}
The procedure populateCmd, specified as the value of
the -populatecommand configuration option, will be
invoked automatically if (and only if) the searchcolumn
subcommand has to examine the children of a tablelist item and these children
are still unknown. In the presence of the -descend
subcommand option, this will be performed recursively As described in
the reference manual, the populateCmd procedure should
just insert the children of the row in question, without expanding the node
or changing its appearance in any other way. In our example, these
children correspond to the contents of the directory whose leaf name is
displayed in the first cell of the specified row:
proc populateCmd {tbl row} {
set dir [$tbl rowattrib $row pathName]
putContents $dir $tbl $row
}
The procedure openSearchDlgForSelFolder, associated
with the Search for Pattern... pop-up menu entry, creates a dialog
window containing:
findPattern procedure associated with the Find
button;
The procedure uses, among others, the
mentry::dateTimeMentry command from the Mentry package
for creating two multi-entry widgets that hold the modification date
interval and the Wcb package for a strait-forward implementation of the text
widget's read-only behavior:
proc openSearchDlgForSelFolder tbl {
set row [$tbl curselection]
set key [$tbl getkeys $row]
set top .top$key
if {[winfo exists $top]} {
raise $top
return ""
}
toplevel $top
set dir [$tbl rowattrib $row pathName]
wm title $top "Search in Directory \"[file nativename $dir]\""
. . .
#
# "Modification Date" checkbuttons and mentry widgets
#
set lfLastModDateTime [ttk::labelframe $f.lfLastModDateTime -text \
"Modification Date"]
set ::data($key-useMinDateTime) 0
set ::data($key-useMaxDateTime) 0
set ckMinDateTime [ttk::checkbutton $lfLastModDateTime.ckMinDateTime -text \
"After:" -variable data($key-useMinDateTime)]
set meMinDateTime [mentry::dateTimeMentry \
$lfLastModDateTime.meMinDateTime YmdHM - : \
-justify center -background white]
set ckMaxDateTime [ttk::checkbutton $lfLastModDateTime.ckMaxDateTime -text \
"Before:" -variable data($key-useMaxDateTime)]
set meMaxDateTime [mentry::dateTimeMentry \
$lfLastModDateTime.meMaxDateTime YmdHM - : \
-justify center -background white]
set maxClock [clock seconds]
set minClock [expr {$maxClock - 24*60*60}]
mentry::putClockVal $minClock $meMinDateTime
mentry::putClockVal $maxClock $meMaxDateTime
. . .
#
# "Find" and "Close" buttons
#
set fBtns [ttk::frame $f.fBtns]
set bFind [ttk::button $fBtns.bFind -text "Find" -default active \
-command [list findPattern $tbl $key]]
set bClose [ttk::button $fBtns.bClose -text "Close" -default normal \
-command [list destroy $top]]
. . .
#
# Readonly text widget displaying the search command
#
set tCmd [text $f.tCmd -background white -height 2 -width 70 -wrap word \
-highlightthickness 0 -insertwidth 0]
wcb::callback $tCmd before insert cancelInput
wcb::callback $tCmd before delete cancelInput
proc cancelInput {w idx args} { wcb::cancel }
set ::data($key-tCmd) $tCmd
#
# Scrollable tablelist widget displaying the search result
#
set fResult $f.fResult
ttk::frame $fResult -class ScrollArea
set resTbl $fResult.tbl
set vsb $fResult.vsb
set hsb $fResult.hsb
tablelist::tablelist $resTbl \
-columns {0 "Path" left
0 "Size" right
0 "Date Modified" left} \
-xscrollcommand [list $hsb set] -yscrollcommand [list $vsb set] \
-movablecolumns no -showseparators yes -height 12 -width 70
. . .
}
The findPattern procedure associated with the
Find button of the dialog described above builds the search command
from the data entered by the user, evaluates it, and displays the data of the
matching items in the search result tablelist widget :
proc findPattern {tbl key} {
. . .
#
# Build, show, and evaluate the search command
#
set searchCmd [list $tbl searchcolumn 0 $::data($key-pattern) \
-parent k$key -all -formatted $::data($key-style)]
if {$::data($key-descend)} {
lappend searchCmd -descend
}
if {$::data($key-noCase)} {
lappend searchCmd -nocase
}
if {$useMinDateTime || $useMaxDateTime} {
set checkCmd [list checkDateTime $minDateTime $maxDateTime]
lappend searchCmd -check $checkCmd
}
_$tCmd insert end $searchCmd
update idletasks
set rowList [eval $searchCmd]
#
# Populate the search result tablelist with the data of the matching items
#
foreach row $rowList {
set item [$tbl get $row]
foreach {name size dateTime} $item {}
. . .
}
}