# tkinter --- Python interface to Tcl/Tk — Setting options

> Options control things like the color and border width of a widget.

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## Knowledge

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Options control things like the color and border width of a widget. Options can be set in three ways

At object creation time, using keyword arguments

After object creation, treating the option name like a dictionary index

Use the config() method to update multiple attrs subsequent to object creation

The fg and bg options used here, and other options that control a widget's appearance, belong to the classic !tkinter widgets. The themed tkinter.ttk widgets recommended in the introduction do not accept them; style a themed widget through the ttk.Style class instead. The three ways of setting an option shown above apply to both widget sets.

For a complete explanation of a given option and its behavior, see the Tk man pages for the widget in question.

Note that the man pages list "STANDARD OPTIONS" and "WIDGET SPECIFIC OPTIONS" for each widget. The former is a list of options that are common to many widgets, the latter are the options that are idiosyncratic to that particular widget. The Standard Options are documented on the options(3) man page.

No distinction between standard and widget-specific options is made in this document. Some options don't apply to some kinds of widgets. Whether a given widget responds to a particular option depends on the class of the widget; buttons have a command option, labels do not.

The options supported by a given widget are listed in that widget's man page, or can be queried at runtime by calling the ~Misc.config method without arguments, or by calling the ~Misc.keys method on that widget. The return value of these calls is a dictionary whose key is the name of the option as a string (for example, 'relief') and whose values are 5-tuples.

Some options, like bg, are synonyms for common options with long names (bg is shorthand for "background").

&gt;&gt;&gt; print(fred.config()) {'relief': ('relief', 'relief', 'Relief', 'raised', 'groove')}

Of course, the dictionary printed will include all the options available and their values. This is meant only as an example.

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