How to change width of TextCtrl in wxPython?

Question

I am trying to create a text control that has a default height but a custom width. This is my current code:

tc = wx.TextCtrl(self, -1) tc.Size.SetWidth(300) 

The width of the text control remains unchanged. I also tried calling tc.Layout() after changing the width without any results. I do not want to enter a custom size in the constructor of the class, since I want it to use the default height. I also tried to be more verbose if tc.GetSize returns a deep copy of the Size object:

 tc = wx.TextCtrl(self, -1, size=(300, 23)) tc_size = tc.Size tc_size.SetWidth(300) tc.Size = tc_size tc.Layout() 

Also to no avail. Why is my code not working and how to make it work?

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^{Setting the size in the constructor works, so sizer is not related to the problem.}

Answer 1

I just noticed that I can pass (300, -1) as the size of the text control:

 wx.TextCtrl(self, -1, size=(300, -1)) 

This leads to text control using the default height. This solves my problem, but doesn’t technically answer my question, so I hold on to the best answer.

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Edit: this answer plus the comments below answer my question.

Answer 2

You should allow sizers to control the size of your controls, rather than setting them explicitly.

 import wx class Frm(wx.Frame): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): super(Frm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs) txt = wx.TextCtrl(self) s = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) s.Add(txt, 1) self.SetSizer(s) self.Layout() app = wx.PySimpleApp() frame = Frm(None) frame.Show() app.MainLoop() 

This allows the controls to be arranged relative to each other with a general guide to your code. For example, running the same code on a Mac compared to Windows can lead to a good layout.

I understand that this does not directly answer your question, but I wanted to push you to sizers if you did not know about them. It takes a lot of effort to write and maintain your interface.