PyGTK Tutorial
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8.2. Scale Widgets

Scale widgets are used to allow the user to visually select and manipulate a value within a specific range. You might want to use a scale widget, for example, to adjust the magnification level on a zoomed preview of a picture, or to control the brightness of a color, or to specify the number of minutes of inactivity before a screensaver takes over the screen.

8.2.1. Creating a Scale Widget

As with scrollbars, there are separate widget types for horizontal and vertical scale widgets. (Most programmers seem to favour horizontal scale widgets.) Since they work essentially the same way, there's no need to treat them separately here. The following methods create vertical and horizontal scale widgets, respectively:

vscale = GtkVScale(adjustment)

hscale = GtkHScale(adjustment)

The adjustment argument can either be an adjustment which has already been created with GtkAdjustment(), or nothing, in which case, an anonymous Adjustment is created with all of its values set to 0.0 (which isn't very useful in this case). In order to avoid confusing yourself, you probably want to create your adjustment with a page_size of 0.0 so that its upper value actually corresponds to the highest value the user can select. (If you're already thoroughly confused, read the section on Adjustments again for an explanation of what exactly adjustments do and how to create and manipulate them.)

8.2.2. Methods and Signals (well, methods, at least)

Scale widgets can display their current value as a number beside the trough. The default behaviour is to show the value, but you can change this with this method:

sacle.set_draw_value(draw_value)

As you might have guessed, draw_value is either TRUE or FALSE, with predictable consequences for either one.

The value displayed by a scale widget is rounded to one decimal point by default, as is the value field in its GtkAdjustment. You can change this with:

scale.set_digits(digits)

where digits is the number of decimal places you want. You can set digits to anything you like, but no more than 13 decimal places will actually be drawn on screen.

Finally, the value can be drawn in different positions relative to the trough:

scale.set_value_pos(pos)

The argument poscan take one of the following values:

POS_LEFT POS_RIGHT POS_TOP POS_BOTTOM

If you position the value on the "side" of the trough (e.g., on the top or bottom of a horizontal scale widget), then it will follow the slider up and down the trough.

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