Which file formats can I use for tkinter icons? - python

I know this might be obvious, but in tkinter you can set an icon, but I have found it really hard to find one. I just wanted to know if you have to use the .ico format for the file or if there is a way to use .png or .jpeg files.
Currently I have
window = Tkinter.Tk()
window.title("Weclome!")
window.geometry("200x300")
window.wm_iconbitmap("Icon.ico")
window.configure(background = "Black")
That is the whole setup I have and I just want to know about line 4:
window.wm_iconbitmap("Icon.ico")
Thanks for responding to my question, although i am sorry for not spending more time looking into the question rather than just asking here.

Let's start by reading the documentation!
The documentation at effbot.org says the following regarding iconbitmap(bitmap=None)
Sets or gets the icon bitmap to use when this window is iconified. This method is ignored by some window managers (including Windows).
Note that this method can only be used to display monochrome icons. To display a color icon, put it in a Label widget and display it using the iconwindow method instead.
Same as wm_iconbitmap.
So here's the documentation about iconwindow(window=None):
Sets or gets the icon window to use as an icon when this window is iconified. This method is ignored by some window managers (including Windows).
Same as wm_iconwindow.
window
The new icon window. If omitted, the current window is returned.
According to this other documentation, which actually says the same things as the docstrings of the homonymous method for tkinter in (at least) Python 2.7, 3.5 and 3.6:
wm_iconbitmap(self, bitmap=None, default=None)
Set bitmap for the iconified widget to bitmap. Return the bitmap if None is given.
Under Windows, the default parameter can be used to set the icon for the widget and any descendents that don't have an icon set explicitly. default can be the relative path to a .ico file (example: root.iconbitmap(default='myicon.ico') ). See Tk documentation for more information.
So here's the original Tk documentation:
wm iconbitmap window ?bitmap?
If bitmap is specified, then it names a bitmap in the standard forms accepted by Tk (see the Tk_GetBitmap manual entry for details). This bitmap is passed to the window manager to be displayed in window's icon, and the command returns an empty string. If an empty string is specified for bitmap, then any current icon bitmap is canceled for window. If bitmap is specified then the command returns an empty string. Otherwise, it returns the name of the current icon bitmap associated with window, or an empty string if window has no icon bitmap.
From my understanding of Tcl, here window is your toplevel window (either an instance of Tk or Toplevel).
On the Windows operating system, an additional flag is supported:
wm iconbitmap window ?-default? ?image?
If the -default flag is given, the icon is applied to all toplevel windows (existing and future) to which no other specific icon has yet been applied.
In addition to bitmap image types, a full path specification to any file which contains a valid Windows icon is also accepted (usually .ico or .icr files), or any file for which the shell has assigned an icon.
Tcl will first test if the file contains an icon, then if it has an assigned icon, and finally, if that fails, test for a bitmap.
Not very concrete and thus helpful answer so far.
My conclusion
The iconbitmap function (or method, depending on the programming language) should be used to set a bitmap image to the window when the window is iconified.
On Windows you're allowed to set a full path specification to any file which contains a valid Windows icon is also accepted (usually .ico or .icr files), or any file for which the shell has assigned an icon.
So which images are bitmaps?
xbm and xpm (for X Window System)
According to the Wikipedia article to which I linked "bitmap" to above:
The X Window System uses a similar xbm format for black-and-white images, and xpm for color images.
...
BMP file format
Netpbm format
.wbmp
ILBM
...
So most of the bitmap file formats are not cross-platform! In other words, if someone tells you to use a xbm image for the icon, it may not work on your platform because xbm are bitmaps for X Window System.
Note: even after this answer you may still have problems!
Other possible useful articles
Set window icon
tkinter TclError: error reading bitmap file

I was struggling a lot to find an answer too but finally I peeked into the source code of idle3.6 where I found the following piece of code:
# set application icon
icondir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'Icons')
if system() == 'Windows':
iconfile = os.path.join(icondir, 'idle.ico')
root.wm_iconbitmap(default=iconfile)
else:
ext = '.png' if TkVersion >= 8.6 else '.gif'
iconfiles = [os.path.join(icondir, 'idle_%d%s' % (size, ext))
for size in (16, 32, 48)]
icons = [PhotoImage(master=root, file=iconfile)
for iconfile in iconfiles]
root.wm_iconphoto(True, *icons)
I searched through all files in the idlelib folder for .ico and .png using the rummage software.
So finally I managed to get the window icon working (on GNU-linux with TkVersion>=8.6) with the following two lines:
icon = PhotoImage(master=root, file='icon.png')
root.wm_iconphoto(True, icon)
where I put the icon directly in my application folder.
From the idle code it seems to me that on Windows still only .ico files are supported.

Related

Get icon of root window to be used by second window tkinter

I was wondering if there is anyway to get the ico file of one window and use it in the same window, without getting to know the icon location.
from tkinter import *
root = Tk()
root.iconbitmap('img/icn.ico')
top = Toplevel()
root.mainloop()
Here I want top to have icon of root without saying top.iconbitmap() or top.iconphoto(), the closest ive got is top.tk.call('wm','iconbitmap') but I dont know what is to be done with this as i couldnt find a understandable documentation.
Why dont I want to use iconbitmap(), its basically that, with tkinter.messagebox you can see the messagebox automatically inherit the icons from the parent widget. I was trying to duplicate this effect. Where if the icon is the default tk icon, then show blank icon or else show the custom icon.
Thanks in advance :D
[I'm using links into the core Tk documentation here. It's much more accurate than the Tkinter docs for most things, and Tkinter is mostly an obvious thin wrapper around it.]
You don't want wm iconbitmap. That's been effectively obsolete for decades; it uses an object class — bitmap — that's not relevant these days as it is monochrome and uses the weirdest format. (Filenames need to be preceded by # to make them work.)
Instead, you want to manipulate the wm iconphoto of the toplevel windows concerned. These take true photo images (there are many image file formats you can load into them) and you can share them easily.
# Load the image from the file; can also use PNG and other formats
my_image = PhotoImage(file="image.gif")
# Apply the image as the icons
first_toplevel_window.iconphoto(False, my_image)
second_toplevel_window.iconphoto(False, my_image)
Note that how the icon is displayed can vary wildly; it's not under your control.
You can use iconphoto() and set the first argument to True, then the same icon will be used for future created toplevels as well:
import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
icn = tk.PhotoImage(file='my-icon.png')
root.iconphoto(True, icn)
top = tk.Toplevel(root)
root.mainloop()
If you use the default instead of the bitmap (or first) argument, the icon will automatically be used on all TopLevel windows:
root.iconbitmap('img/icn.ico') # icon set only on root
root.iconbitmap(bitmap='img/icn.ico') # same as above
root.iconbitmap(default='img/icn.ico') # icon set on root and all TopLevels

Python 3.4 Tkinter Claims Image Doesn't Exist [duplicate]

I am trying to set an application icon (python3 / tkinter) like this:
Interface()
root.title("Quicklist Editor")
root.iconbitmap('#/home/jacob/.icons/qle_icon.ico')
root.resizable(0, 0)
root.mainloop()
no matter what I do, I keep getting an error message (Idle), saying:
return self.tk.call('wm', 'iconbitmap', self._w, bitmap)
_tkinter.TclError: error reading bitmap file "/home/jacob/.icons/qle_icon.ico"
What am I doing wrong?
The problem is not the code, but the icon. I tried creating an xbm with another program than Gimp (some KDE icon editor), and although it looks terrifyingly ugly, it does show an icon.
I guess I have to find a creator that gives an "understandable" icon for my Python program.
Edit
The iconbitmap method turned out to be black and white only, so it was useless after all.
After a long search, I found the solution to set the color of an application's icon for Python 3 (on Linux). I found it here:
root = Tk()
img = PhotoImage(file='your-icon')
root.tk.call('wm', 'iconphoto', root._w, img)
This is an old question, and there is lots of stuff written about it on the web, but all of it is either incorrect or incomplete, so having gotten it to work I thought it would be good to record my actual working code here.
First, you'll need to create an icon and save it in two formats: Windows "ico" and Unix "xbm". 64 x 64 is a good size. XBM is a 1-bit format--pixels just on or off, so no colors, no grays. Linux implementations of tkinter only accept XBM even though every Linux desktop supports real icons, so you're just out of luck there. Also, the XBM spec is ambiguous about whether "on" bits represent black or white, so you may have to invert the XBM for some desktops. Gimp is good for creating these.
Then to put the icon in your titlebar, use this code (Python 3):
import os
from tkinter import *
from tkinter.ttk import *
root = Tk()
root.title("My Application")
if "nt" == os.name:
root.wm_iconbitmap(bitmap = "myicon.ico")
else:
root.wm_iconbitmap(bitmap = "#myicon.xbm")
root.mainloop()
This will allow you to use PNG files as icons, and it does render color. I tested it on Xubuntu 14.04, 32-bit with Python 3.4 (root is your Tk object):
import sys, os
program_directory=sys.path[0]
root.iconphoto(True, PhotoImage(file=os.path.join(program_directory, "test.png")))
(Finding program directory is important if you want it to search for test.png in the same location in all contexts. os.path.join is a cross-platform way to add test.png onto the program directory.)
If you change True to False then it won't use the same icon for windows that aren't the main one.
Please let me know if this works on Windows and Mac.
I tried this, and I couldn't get it to work using Windows 7.
Found a fix.
Use Jacob's answer, but the file has to be a .gif if you're using my OS, (Windows 7) it appears.
Make a 64x64 gif using MS paint, save it, use the file path and bingo, works.
I hope this helps you for cross-platform ability
LOGO_PATH="pic/logo.ico"
LOGO_LINUX_PATH="#pic/logo_1.xbm" #do not forget "#" symbol and .xbm format for Ubuntu
root = Tk()
if detect_screen_size().detect_os()=="Linux":
root.iconbitmap(LOGO_LINUX_PATH)
else:
root.iconbitmap(LOGO_PATH)
Simply using an r string to convert the directory into raw text worked for me:
ex:
app.iconbitmap(r'enter your path here')
In my case, Ubuntu 20.04, python 3.6 (conda), the command iconbitmap(bitmap=icon_path) failed w/ this error. In the end, I put the command w/in a try-except block and it worked; I can see the colorful image.
I'm surprised to see this is such an old question with no good answers, not in eight years! I too want my own icon for my "quickie" tkinter program.
What does work for me on Linux and Python3:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import tkinter
from PIL import Image, ImageTk
root = tkinter.Tk()
im = Image.open('junk.png')
photo = ImageTk.PhotoImage(im)
root.wm_iconphoto(True, photo)
root.mainloop()
The key seems to be using Image and ImageTk. I found zero solutions that worked without these.

Setting Application icon in my python Tk base application (On Ubuntu)

I want to set an image in my GUI application built on Python Tk package.
I tried this code:
root.iconbitmap('window.xbm')
but it gives me this:
root.iconbitmap('window.xbm')
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1567, in wm_iconbitmap
return self.tk.call('wm', 'iconbitmap', self._w, bitmap)
_tkinter.TclError: bitmap "window.xbm" not defined
Can anyone help?
You want to use wm iconphoto. Being more used to Tcl/Tk than Python Tkinter I don't know how that is exposed to you (maybe root.iconphoto) but it takes a tkimage. In Tcl/Tk:
image create photo applicationIcon -file application_icon.png
wm iconphoto . -default applicationIcon
In Tk 8.6 you can provide PNG files. Before that you have to use the TkImg extension for PNG support or use a GIF. The Python PIL package can convert images into TkImage objects for you though so that should help.
EDIT
I tried this out in Python as well and the following worked for me:
import Tkinter
from Tkinter import Tk
root = Tk()
img = Tkinter.Image("photo", file="appicon.gif")
root.tk.call('wm','iconphoto',root._w,img)
Doing this interactively on Ubuntu resulted in the application icon (the image at the top left of the frame and shown in the taskbar) being changed to use my provided gif image.
This worked for me
from tkinter import *
raiz=Tk()
raiz.title("Estes es el titulo")
img = Image("photo", file="pycharm.png")
raiz.tk.call('wm','iconphoto',raiz._w, img)
raiz.mainloop()
Try this:
root.iconbitmap('#window.xbm')
And quote:
Set (get) the icon bitmap to use when this window is iconified. This method are ignored by some window managers (including Windows).
Note that this method can only be used to display monochrome icons. To display a color icon, put it in a Label widget and display it using the iconwindow method instead.

Adding an icon to a ToolButton in Gtk 3

Is there a way to add an icon to a Gtk.ToolButton (Gtk3 using PyGi for Python) to add to the GTK+3 toolbar ?
Below is my code:
self.addfile = Gtk.ToolButton()
self.addfile.set_label("Add File")
self.addfileimg = Gtk.Image()
self.addfileimg.show()
self.addfileimg.set_from_file(self.get_resource("img/file.png"))
self.addfile.set_icon_widget(self.addfileimg)
self.addfile.connect("clicked", self.on_open_file)
Note: The get_resource() method digs into the local working folder for the resource path and this method is assumed working in this context.
I tried the code written above using PyGi. The image file is valid and everything is working but the image doesn't appear.
There is a method of the GtkToolButton class named set_icon_widget, taking a GtkWidget instance as its operand. GtkImage is a container that holds an image. Thus:
myToolButton.set_icon_widget(myImageWidget)

Python 2.7/Windows: How to control position of Tkinter common dialogs?

Python 2.7 under Windows: How can we control the position of Tkinter's common dialogs?
Here's what we've discovered:
Certain common dialogs always open up relative to their parent window
Certain common dialogs always open up centered on the user's desktop
All common dialogs appear to ignore the optional parent= parameter
Questions:
How can we force a dialog to open up relative to its parent window?
How can we force a dialog to open up centered on the user's desktop?
Background:
import tkColorChooser as colorchooser
import tkFileDialog as filedialog
import tkMessageBox as messagebox
; # always open up relative to parent windows
fileOpen = filedialog.askopenfilename()
fileOpens = filedialog.askopenfilenames()
fileSaveAs = filedialog.asksaveasfilename()
color = colorchooser.askcolor()
; # always open up centered on desktop
folderOpen = filedialog.askdirectory()
messagebox.askquestion()
Thank you,
Malcolm
For the Windows messagebox you can't. It appears in the center of the screen and that is that. However, the file selection dialog and color chooser are system dialogs that have been given a Tk wrapper so that users see the stock dialogs on this platform. If you set the -parent option then this is passed through to the wrapped windows and it will center itself over your designated toplevel.
In Tk:toplevel .t
tk_chooseColor -parent .t
How you turn that into Tkinter I leave to someone with some Python experience.
As for centering these, the hwndOwner member of the CHOOSECOLOR structure is always set to the HWND for one of your Tk toplevels. To let it parent against the desktop you'd need to pass NULL there and Tk doesn't let you. You could source the unix version (lib/clrpick.tcl) and show that instead but it would then look weird on a Windows desktop.

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