Canvas item selections

TR - Drawing programs let the user draw a selection rectangle for selecting items. Then you can normally delete, move, edit, or do other fancy operations on this selection. This kind of selection is easily implemented with the canvas. Here is a solution. Just try and draw some rectangles and see what happens:

 # starts a selection rectangle
 #
 proc CanvasSelectStart {win x y} {
    global Canvas
    # create a rectangle at the origin:
    $win create rectangle $x $y $x $y -width 1 -tags selRect
    # remember origin:
    set Canvas(selX) $x
    set Canvas(selY) $y
 }

 # expands an existing selection rectangle
 #
 proc CanvasSelectExpand {win x y} {
    global Canvas
    # set the opposite corner of the selection rectangle
    # to the current cursor location:
    $win coords selRect $Canvas(selX) $Canvas(selY) $x $y
 }

 # finishes an existing selection rectangle
 # and does something with all items inside the selection
 #
 proc CanvasSelectEnd {win x y} {
    global Canvas
    # adjust selection rectangle to the current position:
    CanvasSelectExpand $win $x $y
    # find id of selection rectangle:
    set id [$win find withtag selRect]
    # and give it a gray outline:
    $win itemconfigure selRect -outline gray
    # now delete the tag for the next selections:
    $win dtag selRect
    # get the ids off all overlapping items:
    # (we could also get all 'enclosed' items or do other things here)
    set selection [$win find overlapping $Canvas(selX) $Canvas(selY) $x $y]
    # finally do something with all these items:
    # (Here, I just give them a red filling, if they are not the 
    #  selection rectangle and if they know about -fill at all ...)
    foreach item $selection {
       set type [$win type $item]
       if {$item != $id && $type != "bitmap" && \
                           $type != "image" && \
                           $type != "window"} {
          $win itemconfigure $item -fill red
       }
    }
 }

 # build a simple canvas ...
 canvas .c -background white
 pack .c

 # ... and bind the procedures to the corresponding mouse actions:
 # - Pressing the left mouse button start a selection
 # - Dragging the mouse with mouse button pressed expands the selection
 # - Releasing the mouse button finishes the selection
 #
 bind .c <ButtonPress-1>   {CanvasSelectStart  %W %x %y}
 bind .c <B1-Motion>       {CanvasSelectExpand %W %x %y}
 bind .c <ButtonRelease-1> {CanvasSelectEnd    %W %x %y}

See also Canvas rectangle marking


TS See also Canvas lasso selection


gold added pix and some categories

Canvas item selections screenshot png