Question

Is it possible to get a text box to have a border even when inactive?

Answer 1

I am not sure I know what “border when inactive” means, but you can certainly add a border to a Text in TkInter. The following code creates two outer frames and two inner frames, then adds a Text to each inner frame. The frames are given a border of 5 px on all sides.

from Tkinter import *

root = Tk()

left_outer = Frame(root, bd=1)
left_outer.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y, pady=5, padx=5)
right_outer = Frame(root, bd=1)
right_outer.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y, pady=5, padx=5)

left = Frame(left_outer, bd=2, relief=SUNKEN)
right = Frame(right_outer, bd=2, relief=SUNKEN)
left.pack(fill=Y)
right.pack(fill=Y)

t_start = Text(left, width=20, height=200)
t_start.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
s_start = Scrollbar(left)
s_start.pack(side=RIGHT, fill=Y)
s_start.config(command=t_start.yview)
t_start.config(yscrollcommand=s_start.set)

t_end = Text(right, width=20, height=200)
t_end.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
s_end = Scrollbar(right)
s_end.pack(side=RIGHT, fill=Y)
s_end.config(command=t_end.yview)
t_end.config(yscrollcommand=s_end.set)

root.geometry("400x200")
root.mainloop()