Question

I want to track my mouse-position and show that in a tiny window.
For that, I created this piece of code:

#! /usr/bin/python

from Tkinter import *
from Xlib import display

def mousepos():
    data = display.Display().screen().root.query_pointer()._data
    return data["root_x"], data["root_y"]

root = Tk()
strl = "mouse at {0}".format(mousepos())
lab = Label(root,text=strl)
lab.pack()
root.title("Mouseposition")

root.mainloop()

This little script shows the mouse-position on startup but doesn’t refresh it on mouse-movement. I don’t get behind it (did I say that I’m new to python?).
I think I have to use an event from Xlib that tells my script when the mouse is moving…

How do I refresh my mouse-position?

Answer 1

1. Use root.after to call update periodically.
2. Use strl = tk.StringVar() and tk.Label(...,textvariable=strl) to
   allow the Label text to change.
3. Call strl.set() to change the Label text.
4. A default value for screenroot equal to display.Display().screen().root was added
   to mousepos so that most of that long chain of function calls are
   not repeated every time mousepos is called. Calling mousepos() without any arguments will continue to work as usual.

---

import Tkinter as tk
import Xlib.display as display

def mousepos(screenroot=display.Display().screen().root):
    pointer = screenroot.query_pointer()
    data = pointer._data
    return data["root_x"], data["root_y"]

def update():
    strl.set("mouse at {0}".format(mousepos()))
    root.after(100, update)

root = tk.Tk()
strl = tk.StringVar()
lab = tk.Label(root,textvariable=strl)
lab.pack()
root.after(100, update)
root.title("Mouseposition")
root.mainloop()