Item IDs and Tags
- Preface
- Introduction
- Tutorial
- Implementation
- Commands
- bitmap
- eval-wish
- get-tk-var
- photo
- set-tk-var!
- tk
- tk-id->widget
- tk-var
- tk/after
- tk/appname
- tk/bind
- tk/bindtags
- tk/caret
- tk/choosecolor
- tk/choosedirectory
- tk/clipboard
- tk/console
- tk/destroy
- tk/dialog
- tk/event
- tk/focus
- tk/getopenfile
- tk/getsavefile
- tk/grab
- tk/grid
- tk/image
- tk/lower
- tk/messagebox
- tk/option
- tk/pack
- tk/place
- tk/popup
- tk/raise
- tk/scaling
- tk/update
- tk/useinputmethods
- tk/wait
- tk/windowingsystem
- tk/winfo
- tk/wm
- Options
- Extensions
- Changes
Items in a canvas widget may be named in either of two ways: by id or by tag. Each item has a unique identifying number which is assigned to that item when it is created. The id of an item never changes and id numbers are never re-used within the lifetime of a canvas widget.
Each item may also have any number of tags associated with it. A tag is just a string of characters, and it may take any form except that of an integer. For example, "x123" is OK but "123" isn't. The same tag may be associated with many different items. This is commonly done to group items in various interesting ways; for example, all selected items might be given the tag ``selected''.
The tag all is implicitly associated with every item in the canvas; it may be used to invoke operations on all the items in the canvas.
The tag current is managed automatically by Tk; it applies to the current item, which is the topmost item whose drawn area covers the position of the mouse cursor. If the mouse is not in the canvas widget or is not over an item, then no item has the current tag.
When specifying items in canvas widget commands, if the specifier is an integer then it is assumed to refer to the single item with that id. If the specifier is not an integer, then it is assumed to refer to all of the items in the canvas that have a tag matching the specifier. The symbol tagOrId is used below to indicate that an argument specifies either an id that selects a single item or a tag that selects zero or more items.
tagOrId may contain a logical expressions of tags by using operators: "&&", "||", "^", "!", and parenthezised subexpressions. For example:
(#<widget> 'find 'withtag "(a&&!b)||(!a&&b)")
or equivalently:
(#<widget> 'find 'withtag "a^b")
will find only those items with either "a" or "b" tags, but not both.
Some widget commands only operate on a single item at a time; if tagOrId is specified in a way that names multiple items, then the normal behavior is for the command to use the first (lowest) of these items in the display list that is suitable for the command. Exceptions are noted in the widget command descriptions below.