ANNOUNCE: Multi-column listbox package Tablelist 4.1

I am pleased to announce Version 4.1 of the multi-column listbox
package Tablelist.

What is new in Tablelist 4.1?
-----------------------------

1. Significantly extended the tile support in the Tablelist_tile
     package: Header labels now look and behave like the column
     headings of treeview widgets, and over a dozen configuration
     options have theme-specific default values (thanks to Paul
     Obermeier for his excellent "poImgview" application, which helped
     me a lot during this work, as well as to Georgios Petasis for his
     Qt-related hints).

2. Header labels containing the mouse cursor are now set into active
     state. Their appearance is controlled in the Tablelist package by
     the new configuration options "-labelactivebackground" and
     "-labelactiveforeground", while the Tablelist_tile package uses
     theme-specific background and foreground colors for the active and
     pressed states of the labels.

3. New configuration option "-arrowstyle", specifying the flat or
     sunken relief and the dimensions of the arrow indicating the
     sorting order. This option has windowing system- and theme-
     specific default values.

4. New configuration option "-protecttitlecolumns", used to protect
     the title column boundary from being crossed when moving a column
     interactively (thanks to Schelte Bron for his proposal).

5. New configuration option "-spacing", specifying additional space to
     provide above and below each tablelist row (thanks to Sebastien
     Barre for his proposal).

6. New column configuration option "-stretchable", complementing the
     global "-stretch" option (thanks to Sebastien Barre for his
     proposal).

7. New row configuration option "-name", whose value can also be used
     as a row index and as the first component of a cell index (thanks
     to John Kozura for his proposal).

8. New cell configuration option "-windowdestroy", specifying a script
     to be invoked when a window embedded into the cell is destroyed
     (thanks to Sebastien Barre for his proposal).

9. New "imagelabelpath" subcommand (thanks to Schelte Bron for his
     proposal).

10. Keyboard navigation during interactive cell editing now works on
     Mac OS X Aqua, too.

11. Restored the support for Tcl/Tk versions earlier than 8.3, by
     cleaning up the handling of the "-titlecolumns" option (thanks to
     Andreas Flach and Brian O'Hagan for their bug reports).

12. Restored the support for Tcl/Tk versions earlier than 8.0.4, which
     has been broken since release 3.5, due to the use of the
     <MouseWheel> event, introduced in Tk 8.0.4 (thanks to Brian O'Hagan
     for his valuable contribution).

13. Worked around a peculiarity of the text widget's "dump -window"
     command (thanks to Greg Reynolds for his bug-fix).

14. Fixed a binding-related bug in "extended" selection mode (thanks to
     David Mattinson for his bug-fix).

15. Numerous further improvements and minor bug fixes (thanks to
     Schelte Bron, Patrick Fradin, Silas Justiniano, and Uwe Koloska for
     their bug reports and valuable contributions).

What is Tablelist?
------------------

Tablelist is a library package for Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or higher,
written in pure Tcl/Tk code. It contains:

   - the implementation of the "tablelist" mega-widget, including a
     general utility module for mega-widgets;
   - a demo script containing a useful procedure that displays the
     configuration options of an arbitrary widget in a tablelist and
     enables you to edit their values interactively;
   - a second demo script, implementing a simple widget browser based on
     a tablelist;
   - a third demo script, showing several ways to improve the appearance
     of a tablelist widget;
   - four further demo scripts, illustrating the interactive cell
     editing with the aid of various widgets from the Tk core and from
     the packages tile, BWidget, Iwidgets, combobox (by Bryan Oakley),
     and Mentry;
   - one further demo script, with a tablelist widget containing
     embedded windows;
   - tile-based counterparts of the above-mentioned demo scripts;
   - a tutorial in HTML format;
   - reference pages in HTML format.

A tablelist widget is a multi-column listbox. The width of each column
can be dynamic (i.e., just large enough to hold all its elements,
including the header) or static (specified in characters or pixels).
The columns are, per default, resizable. The alignment of each column
can be specified as "left", "right", or "center".

The columns, rows, and cells can be configured individually. Several
of the global and column-specific options refer to the headers,
implemented as label widgets. For instance, the "-labelcommand" option
specifies a Tcl command to be invoked when mouse button 1 is released
over a label. The most common value of this option is
"tablelist::sortByColumn", which sorts the items based on the
respective column.

Interactive editing of the elements of a tablelist widget can be
enabled for individual cells and for entire columns. A great variety
of widgets from the Tk core and from the packages tile, BWidget,
Iwidgets, combobox, and Mentry is supported for being used as embedded
edit window. In addition, a rich set of keyboard bindings is provided
for a comfortable navigation between the editable cells.

The Tcl command corresponding to a tablelist widget is very similar to
the one associated with a normal listbox. There are column-, row-, and
cell-specific counterparts of the "configure" and "cget" subcommands
("columnconfigure", "rowconfigure", "cellconfigure", ...). They can be
used, among others, to insert images into the cells and the header
labels, or to insert embedded windows into the cells. The "index",
"nearest", and "see" command options refer to the rows, but similar
subcommands are provided for the columns and cells ("columnindex",
"cellindex", ...). The items can be sorted with the "sort" and
"sortbycolumn" command options.

The bindings defined for the body of a tablelist widget make it behave
just like a normal listbox. This includes the support for the virtual
event <<ListboxSelect>> (which is equivalent to <<TablelistSelect>>).
In addition, version 2.3 or higher of the widget callback package Wcb
(written in pure Tcl/Tk code as well) can be used to define callbacks
for the "activate", "selection set", and "selection clear" commands,
and Wcb version 3.0 or higher also supports callbacks for the
"activatecell", "cellselection set", and "cellselection clear"
commands. The download location of Wcb is

     http://www.nemethi.de

How to get it?
--------------

Tablelist is available for free download from the same URL as Wcb. The
distribution file is "tablelist4.1.tar.gz" for UNIX and
"tablelist4_1.zip" for Windows. These files contain the same
information, except for the additional carriage return character
preceding the linefeed at the end of each line in the text files for
Windows.

How to install it?
------------------

Install the package as a subdirectory of one of the directories given
by the "auto_path" variable. For example, you can install it as a
directory at the same level as the Tcl and Tk script libraries. The
locations of these library directories are given by the "tcl_library"
and "tk_library" variables, respectively.

To install Tablelist on UNIX, "cd" to the desired directory and unpack
the distribution file "tablelist4.1.tar.gz":

     gunzip -c tablelist4.1.tar.gz | tar -xf -

This command will create a directory named "tablelist4.1", with the
subdirectories "demos", "doc", "images", and "scripts".

On Windows, use WinZip or some other program capable of unpacking the
distribution file "tablelist4_1.zip" into the directory "tablelist4.1",
with the subdirectories "demos", "doc", "images", and "scripts".

Note that the file "tablelistEdit.tcl" in the "scripts" directory is
only needed for applications making use of interactive cell editing.
Similarly, the file "tablelistMove.tcl" in the same directory is only
required for scripts invoking the "move" or "movecolumn" tablelist
command. Finally, the file "tablelistThemes.tcl" is only needed for
applications using the package Tablelist_tile (see next section).

Next, you should check the exact version number of your Tcl/Tk
distribution, given by the "tcl_patchLevel" and "tk_patchLevel"
variables. If you are using Tcl/Tk version 8.2.X, 8.3.0 - 8.3.2, or
8.4a1, then you should proceed as described in the "How to install it?"
section of the file "tablelist.html", located in the "doc" directory.

How to use it?
--------------

The Tablelist distribution provides two packages, called Tablelist and
Tablelist_tile. The main difference between the two is that
Tablelist_tile enables the tile-based, theme-specific appearance of
tablelist widgets; this package requires Tcl/Tk 8.4 or higher and tile
0.6 or higher. It is not possible to use both packages in one and the
same application, because both are implemented in the same "tablelist"
namespace and provide identical commands.

To be able to use the commands and variables implemented in the package
Tablelist, your scripts must contain one of the lines

     package require Tablelist
     package require tablelist

Likewise, to be able to use the commands and variables implemented in
the package Tablelist_tile, your scripts must contain one of the lines

     package require Tablelist_tile
     package require tablelist_tile

Since the packagse Tablelist and Tablelist_tile are implemented in the
namespace "tablelist", you must either import the procedures you need,
or use qualified names like "tablelist::tablelist".

For a detailed description of the commands and variables provided by
Tablelist and of the examples contained in the "demos" directory, see
the tutorial "tablelist.html" and the reference pages, all located in
the "doc" directory.

-- 
Csaba Nemethi   http://www.nemethi.de   mailto:csaba.nemethi@t-online.de