From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2006-08-20T05:58:18+09:00
Subject: Re: help with TkRoot

Now that I've looked a little deeper into the problem, I see that  
Tk.root.withdraw wouldn't be useful, because in your case, if you use  
it, you won't see the root window's menu bar. What to do? Well, you  
might try something like the following:

<code>
root = TkRoot.new {title 'Ruby Tk'}

mnu_bar = TkMenu.new()
    windo_mnu = TkMenu.new(mnu_bar)
       windo_mnu.add_command(
          'label'=>"Show",
          'command'=>lambda {windo_mnu.show}
       )
       windo_mnu.add_command(
          'label'=>"Hide",
          'state'=>'disabled',
          'command'=>lambda {windo_mnu.hide}
       )
       def windo_mnu.show
          entryconfigure(0, 'state'=>'disabled') # disable show
          entryconfigure(1, 'state'=>'normal')   # enable hide
          Tk.root.geometry($visible)
       end
       def windo_mnu.hide
          entryconfigure(1, 'state'=>'disabled') # disable hide
          entryconfigure(0, 'state'=>'normal')   # enable show
          Tk.root.geometry("0x0+0+0")
       end
    mnu_bar.add_cascade('label'=>"Window", 'menu'=>windo_mnu)
root.menu(mnu_bar)

min_w, min_h = 200, 100
root.minsize(min_w, min_h)
root_x = (root.winfo_screenwidth - min_w) / 2
$visible = "#{min_w}x#{min_h}+#{root_x}+50"
root.geometry("0x0+0+0")

root.bind('Command-q') {exit}

Tk.mainloop
</code>

This is my best shot at the moment. It's not very elegant since you  
can still see the vestigial root window in the upper left-hand corner  
of the screen if you look hard, but perhaps it's good enough to fool  
your users :)

Regards, Morton

On Aug 19, 2006, at 3:23 PM, Morton Goldberg wrote:

> Yes, you can make the root window invisible. The following produces  
> a default menu bar but no (visible) root window on my Mac:
>
>    require 'tk'
>
>    root = TkRoot.new
>    root.withdraw
>    Tk.mainloop