A little help with a simple Tcl/Tk window/buttons layout

[berkeman]

I've used other Tcl/Tk widgets for manufacturing test programs a few years ago, but I'm making a simple test GUI now and am using a different approach. It's a simple test program that I want to have a simple GUI for. Basically it executes a test and displays whether the test passed or failed. Simple stuff.

But I've been struggling a bit finding the simplest way to place the buttons with the sizes and placements that I want. I've tried out the Place, Pack, Grid, and other Tk widget placement commands, and have not found a scheme that works and is intuitive for me.

My initial question is why does the configure statement seem to use units of pixels (maybe?), while the button -height and -width statements seem to use units of characters and rows?

Is there a better and more consistent way of placing buttons in a Tcl/Tk window? The code below gives a fairly well-placed window with buttons on the Windows systems I've tested it on, but the disconnect between the . size and the button placements and sizes worries me.

Thanks for any help, and thanks for any overall comments about the code or style.

[code]
# Basic work to start RF Ping Test
#

# Configure window size
. configure -width 375 -height 300

# Create Quit and Run buttons
set quitbutton [ button .quitbutton -text "Quit" -command "exit" ]

set gobutton [ button .gobutton -text "Run RF Ping Test" \
    -height 3 \
    -command { $passbutton configure -bg green } ]

# Create Pass and Fail buttons
set passbutton [ button .passbutton -bg white -text "PASS" \
    -width 20 -height 10 \
    -command { $passbutton configure -bg white } ]

set failbutton [ button .failbutton -bg white -text "FAIL" \
    -width 20 -height 10 \
    -command { $failbutton configure -bg white } ]

# Place Pass/Fail buttons near the top
place $passbutton -y 0 -x 0
place $failbutton -y 0 -x 200

# Place Go and Quit buttons near the bottom
place $gobutton -y 175 -x 125
place $quitbutton -y 250 -x 300

EDIT -- BTW, the actual test code is not in the script yet -- right now it always shows a Pass. The user will click the Pass or Fail to clear the test result.

 

[berkeman]