3 Different issues with ttk treeviews in python

Question

I am doing a chat client using a treeview with multiple columns in Python.

This is the code for the treeview:

chat = ttk.Treeview(height="26", columns=("Nick","Mensaje","Hora"), selectmode="extended")
chat.heading('#1', text='Nick', anchor=W)
chat.heading('#2', text='Mensaje', anchor=W)
chat.heading('#3', text='Hora', anchor=W)
chat.column('#1', stretch=NO, minwidth=0, width=130)
chat.column('#2', stretch=NO, minwidth=0, width=620)
chat.column('#3', stretch=NO, minwidth=0, width=65)
chat.column('#0', stretch=NO, minwidth=0, width=0) #width 0 to not display it

And I add items like this:

chat.insert("", "end", "", values=((user, message, time)), tags=(messageid))
chat.tag_configure(messageid, foreground='#ff0000')

Now, that works perfectly (here's a screenshot as an example): but that last line of code changes the colour of all 3 columns in that row. What I want is to change only the colour of the text of the #2 column (just the message) and not the entire row (not Nick or Time columns). I tried for a long time now but it's 4 AM and I surrender ☹ Is there any way to do it?

Updating 2 weeks later

Now I tried to do 3 different treeviews (1 column each) and it ends up this way: Although that fix the colour issue, i have a new issue: The scrollbar. It's there a way to bound a scrollbar to 3 different treeviews? all my attemps had failed so far and i can move only one of the treeview with a scrollbar. It's possible to bound to 3 treeviews? (If yes: how?, worth?, should i?)

And also another problem: all attempts to remove treeview border have failed in TTK python.

Another problem is that now the Mensaje treeview only displays the first word. No idea why neither :\ this is the new code about the first word issue.

chat2 = ttk.Treeview(height="28", columns="Mensaje", selectmode="extended")
chat2.heading('#1', text='Mensaje', anchor=CENTER)
chat2.column('#1', stretch=NO, minwidth=400, width=620)
chat2.column('#0', stretch=NO, minwidth=0, width=0)

And this goes on message:

BotGUI.chat2.insert("", "end", iid=(idmensajeactual), values=mensaje, tags=(messageid))
try:
  BotGUI.chat2.tag_configure(messageid, foreground='#'+colorfuente) #tfl
except TclError:
  print("[Error02] - can't assign colour of "+ usuario +".")

Answer 1

1. First Question : Scrollbar

A solution consist of creating a top-level ttk.Treeview object, and another tree for every column. The scrollbars activations are linked to the top-level tree view. It's a bit more cumbersome than having the three columns in the same tree object, but it works :

# Top level Treeview object
bot =  ttk.Treeview( Tkinter.Tk() )

# Columns (treeview objects also)
columns = create_columns( bot)

################################
## Scrollbars
vsb = ttk.Scrollbar(    bot,
                        orient="vertical", 
                        command = bot.yview
                        )

hsb = ttk.Scrollbar(    bot,
                        orient="horizontal",
                        command = bot.xview
                        )

## Link scrollbars activation to top-level object
bot.configure(  yscrollcommand=vsb.set,
                xscrollcommand=hsb.set) 
## Link scrollbar also to every columns
map ( lambda col : col.configure(   yscrollcommand=vsb.set,xscrollcommand=hsb.set), columns )

Second Question : The border/ridge

Use the style configuration object

ttk.Style().configure(  '.',              # every class of object
            relief = 'flat',  # flat ridge for separator
            borderwidth = 0,  # zero width for the border
                )

However it will not work on Windows : it is a bug (or a feature :p ).

Windows completely ignores the -borderwidth parameter. (more infos on the comp.lang.tcl mailing list : http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Tcl/comp.lang.tcl/2007-11/msg00923.html )

Third Question : the truncature

That's the easiest question : the parameter -values expect an iterable for to apply to each columns. Ex:

for (col, value) in zip( tree.columns(), values ) :
     col.insert(value)

That's where the bug is : a string is also an iterable ! (it is literally a list of char) so when you try to call insert with the message "This is a message", ttk will apply "This" to the first column, "is" to the second, and so on ... To enforce the fact that the message should be applied as a whole, just add a coma at the end : (idmensajeactual,)

This code works :

chat2.insert("", "end", iid=(idmensajeactual,) , values=mensaje, tags=(messageid))

Finally

I've uploaded my stub as a github gist. You can check it out here and tweak it to your needs : https://gist.github.com/lucasg/7643411

Output :