Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1181449
In Process
Bakuriu
Asked: 2019-10-17 11:30:13 +0800 CST

Avoid showing cancel button on dialog

  • 772

I'm using Kubuntu 18.04 with:

$ zenity --version
3.28.1

I want to display a --list dialog with zenity, but I don't want to show the Cancel button (in fact I'm okay if there is no OK either). It should be easy with the --no-cancel option:

$ zenity --list --no-cancel
--no-cancel is not supported for this dialog

The output seems to indicate that zenity knows about the option but does not want to let me use it.

I only want to show the user the data in a table. I don't care about selection/editing or getting a result back.

Is there any alternative way? Or is zenity simply unable to do this?

command-line button zenity

2 Answers

  1. Yes, zenity is pretty limited. Luckily there’s a fork available which fills the gap: yad – “Yet Another Dialog” (sudo apt install yad). It uses the same syntax as zenity, but adds a ton of useful options, for example --button to explicitly define the buttons of your dialog window:

    yad --list --button=OK:0

    This displays a list window with just an “OK” button returning the exit code 0.

    Example

    Here’s a simple example inspired by one from the manpage:

    yad --list --button=OK:0 --checklist --column "Buy" --column "Item" \
  TRUE Apples TRUE Oranges FALSE Pears FALSE Toothpaste

    yad usage example

    When “OK” is clicked in this state the program returns a 0 exit code and prints the checked options to stdout:

    TRUE|Apples|
TRUE|Oranges|

    Further reading

    • 8

  2. Relabel Zenity Cancel button

    You can relabel the button but you can't remove it:

    $ zenity --list --cancel-label="Go Back" --column="Column 1"

    Will give you:

    zenity cancel relabel.png

    YAD (Yet Another Dialog)

    Both yad and zenity allow you to use GUI dialog boxes from a bash script or the shell command line. Yad surpasses Zenity in every department though:

    sudo apt install yad

    Works in all distros.

    Yad Progress bars

    yad progress bars.png

    You can define multiple progress bars in yad where zenity only offers 1. You can also include scrolling text.

    Yad buttons

    yad buttons.png

    You can assign any text you want to any button. Also notice you can include a Window icon too.

    Yad text entry

    yad text entry.png

    Yad displays text for you to change. Zenity cannot display existing text you can only enter new text.

    Yad support

    The author of Yad and many more contributors answer your questions in google groups. I've posted four or five questions about advanced functionality and usually get an answer within 24 hours. Not to mention enhancements are provided through the same channel.

    • 7