Of these CCPN mostly uses the grid geometry manager (the alternatives being place and pack). With the Tkinter based graphics system that CCPN currently uses there are three possible ways of specifying the locations of different widgets. Geometry ManagementĪn important concept when building graphical interfaces is to arrange the widgets in an appropriate way. All of the graphical widgets that we will demonstrate for use with CCPN are based on the Tkinter library (which is the Python implementation of the Tcl/Tk system), however the CCPN widgets have a layer of Python that mostly separates you from some of the underying Tkinter complexities and awkwardness. The basic idea is that you create graphical widgets to enable a user to set various parameters, perform operations and display results. Examples of widgets include popup windows (separate moveable areas on your screen that contain other widgets), buttons that you click to perform operations and entry fields that you can type text into. A widget is a Python object that has a graphical representation. The graphical user interfaces that are demonstrated here are constructed using graphical objects, which will be referred to as widgets. Writing a Python macro script for Analysis may be sufficient for simple, linear tasks, but a bespoke graphical interface will allow things to get more complex. This last part of the programming tutorial involves the creation of graphical user interfaces.