13,420
edits
Changes
no edit summary
== Features of Zenity ==
There are many different types of dialog boxes that the Zenity command can create. The following is a table that uses options (starting with -- symbol immediately followed by a word to indicate the type dialog box to creategenerate. You are encouraged to use the online man pages to refer to all options, but here are a couple of options:<br /><br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="10">
To obtain input, think of Zenity as a replacement for the '''read''' command.
You can use '''--entry''' to prompt the user for input. When the user enters text and clicks the OK button, or presses the <ENTER> key, zenity will return the value of that entered text. To store it into a variable to be used later in the program, you can use command substitution (enough said, since this is being used for an assignment! You figure it out :) ... ).
All of the zenity dialog boxes that prompt users for information, return that information as standard output (stdout). '''Therefore, to store it into a <u>variable</u> to be used later in the program, you can use command substitution (enough said, since this is being used for an assignment! You figure it out :) ... )'''. To obtain more options with this command, you should use the man pages... (eg. '''man zenity'''). == Simple Examples ==
<u>Displaying Output</u>
<table>
<tr>
<td>'''zenity --info --text "Here is an example of using zenity command to display text in a dialog box instead instead of using echo to display in a shell..."'''</td>
</tr>
<tr>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Here is input dialog box for user to enter input:<br /><br />[[Image:zenity_entry.png|left|400px200px]]</td>
</tr>
</table>
<u>Prompting User (Menu Selection)</u>
<table>
<tr>
<td>'''zenity --list --radiolist --text "<b>Please</b> make a selection:" --hide-header --column "Buy" --column "Item" FALSE "Door 1" FALSE "Door 2" FALSE "Door 3" FALSE Quit'''</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Here is input dialog box for user to make a selection from a menu:<br /><br />[[Image:zenity_selection.png|left|300px]]</td>
</tr>
</table>
<u>Piping Command Output to a Graphical Display</u>
<table>
<tr>
<td>'''cal | zenity --text-info'''</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Here is input dialog box to display stdout from a command graphically as opposed to in a shell:<br /><br />[[Image:zenityPipe.png|left|300px]]</td>
</tr>
</table>
<u>Displaying Text Over Several Lines</u>
<table>
<tr>
<td>'''zenity --info --text "Sentence1\n\nSentence2\n\nSentence3"'''</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Here is output from above command. Notice how each sentence appears on a separate line. The "\n" character represents a new-line:<br /><br />[[Image:newlines.png|left|150px]]</td>
</tr>
</table>
Have fun :)
Murray Saul
