bashcommand lineguizenity
I want to crate a GUI for some command line programs and I need to get info from multiple text fields e.g. 'Username', 'Password' and a checkbox 'Sign automatically?'.
I need to set particular variables in my script equal to the respective text fields' input by the user e.g. user, pass, login. Also it would have an OK button and a Quit button.
How can I realise this this? I searched online and I was able to find only examples with one text field?
It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Dialog creates curses-based text dialog boxes that are accessible from the console. This is useful for adding some level of interaction to shell scripts. Dialog is older than the hills but still has its uses.
Zenity creates GTK-based graphical dialog boxes for use in a windowed GUI environment. This is useful for adding a few graphical touches to something that is running as a script but the user didn't run it from a text console and it needs some interaction. Zenity is a relatively new player but since it's distributed with Gnome it's widely available and stable.
There are of course other use-cases but the two tools are so fundamentally different that it's up to you to decide what you are trying to accomplish, then one tool or the other will be an obvious choice.
I've not figured out a method to reduce it's size below the defaults either. You might want to give gxmessage a try instead. It can be reduced, though it too has a minimum size that it can be shrunken to. It does have better control surfaces, IMO, than zenity with respect to font size selection and window dimensions though.
$ gxmessage -center -timeout 60 -font "monospace 9" -buttons "Okay":1
-geometry 300x50 --wrap \
" Hello there friends. Hello there friends. Hello there friends. Hello there friends."
If you really want to control the look of GTK+ applications I believe the appropriate way is through the resource file $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0. You can add things like the font in here to override to say a monospace font. For experimentation purposes I made a copy of .gtkrc-2.0 and called it .gtkrc-20.mono8.
The following will make the default font monospace 8:
# $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0.mono8
style "font" {
font_name = "monospace 8"
}
widget_class "*" style "font"
gtk-font-name = "monospace 8"
You can then control whether this file get's used by GTK+ applications like so:
$ GTK2_RC_FILES=.gtkrc-2.0.mono8 <gtk app>
So here's zenity using defaults:
Here's zenity using our .gtkrc-2.0.mono8 resource file:
NOTE: The command used above was this:
$ GTK2_RC_FILES=.gtkrc-2.0.mono8 zenity --info --title="Status" --text \
"Hello there friends. Hello there friends. Hello there friends."
So you can see that we can control GTK+ applications through the .gtkrc-2.0 file but what options can we put in this file. Well there's an app for that 8-), called gtk-parasite. It was in my Fedora repositories as gtkparasite.
Once installed you invoke it against a GTK+ application like so:
$ GTK_MODULES=gtkparasite <gtk app>
So let's invoke zenity:
$ GTK_MODULES=gtkparasite zenity --info --title="Status" --text \
"Hello there friends. Hello there friends. Hello there friends."
If you mess around with changing spacing in some of the sub-components and hiding the icon you can get the zenity down to a size of 440x65:
Best Answer
Basically, you can use multi-entry forms using Zenity. A form can be built using text fields, password fields, and calendars. Text fields can be added with the
--add-entryflag. Password fields are added with the--add-passwordflag, and calandars are added with the--add-calendarflag.Zenity form
Here is a tutorial that might help you out.