Hello, I’m new to using tkinter and I am attempting to center the text in the GUI to always be vertically center of the window. Currently the text is center to the left of the canvas. I cant tell whether its the frame or label that needs the code change but what I’ve tried so far has not worked.
Can anyone help me figure out which part(s) I need to change?
import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Class Display")
root.geometry("400x400")
root.configure(bg='red')
scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(root)
scrollbar.pack(side=tk.RIGHT, fill=tk.Y)
canvas = tk.Canvas(root, width=300, height=400, bg='white', highlightthickness=0)
canvas.pack(fill="both", expand=True, pady=30, padx=30)
# Add a frame on the canvas to hold labels (as labels themselves can't scroll)
frame = tk.Frame(canvas, bg='white')
canvas.create_window((0, 0), window=frame, anchor='center')
# Configure the scrollbar to scroll the canvas window
scrollbar.config(command=canvas.yview)
canvas.config(yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set)
for i in range(50):
label = tk.Label(frame, text="Hello Silly", fg="Pink", font=("Helvetica", 16))
label.pack(fill=tk.BOTH, anchor='center') # Center each label
frame.update_idletasks() # Update the frame to fit all labels
canvas.config(scrollregion=canvas.bbox("all")) # Update the scroll region to include all items
root.mainloop()
Edit: I found a soultion. I replaced canvas.create_window((0, 0), window=frame, anchor='nw') with
def center_frame(event=None):
canvas.create_window((canvas.winfo_width() // 2, 0), window=frame, anchor='n') # Anchor to the top of the canvas
canvas.config(scrollregion=canvas.bbox("all")) # Update the scroll region after centering
# Update the scroll region after centering
# Bind the <Configure> event to update the frame's position on window resize
canvas.bind("<Configure>", center_frame)
Note that your canvas has geometry values of width = 300 and height = 400.
The “width” corresponds to the x coordinate. Your value for padx is set to 30 (near the beginning of the x-coordinate). The half-way point of 300 is 150. So, set padx = 150 or something less than this since you have to take into account the width and starting point of the text which is not zero (0).
That only centers the text by increase the padding and force the label into the center. I want to center the text without increasing the padding similar to the above Photoshop mock up
import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Class Display")
root.geometry("400x400")
root.configure(bg='red')
scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(root)
scrollbar.pack(side=tk.RIGHT, fill=tk.Y)
canvas = tk.Canvas(root, width=300, height=400, bg='white', highlightthickness=0)
canvas.pack(fill="both", expand=True, pady=30, padx=30)
# Add a frame on the canvas to hold labels (as labels themselves can't scroll)
frame = tk.Frame(canvas, bg='white')
canvas.create_window((0, 0), window=frame, anchor='center', width=325)
# Configure the scrollbar to scroll the canvas window
scrollbar.config(command=canvas.yview)
canvas.config(yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set)
for i in range(50):
label = tk.Label(frame, text="Hello Silly", fg="Pink", font=("Helvetica", 16))
label.pack(fill=tk.BOTH, anchor='center') # Center each label
frame.update_idletasks() # Update the frame to fit all labels
canvas.config(scrollregion=canvas.bbox("all")) # Update the scroll region to include all items
root.mainloop()
Don’t click on the maximize widget to expand the window since you specifically created it with dimensions of 400 x 400.
Simply don’t use a Canvas if you don’t need to. Canvas is a great tool for displaying images, drawings, geometrical shapes, etc., but not for handling text. It is more intended for displaying static scenes, hence your problem for dynamically centering.
For displaying text and having it gracefully resize and recenter, you should instead use a Label or a Text widget.
