Your problem will be to find a way to reference the text creation points with respect to the location of the various rectangles on the canvas. It can all be done, maybe using 'groups' or make them independent objects, and do something like "my $cell{1}{'obj} = new Cell(-x=>$x,-y=>$y) in some sort of double loop to make your grid. Then all your need to do is make text points in the object, (or even a plain hash will do), and you can get them with syntax like $cell{2}{upper_left}, etc. Or if OO, $cell{2}->upper_left

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Tk;
use strict;
my $w=20;
my $x=0;
my $y=0;

my %nums = (
   0 => ['black','yellow'],
   1 => ['yellow','black'],
   2 => ['white','green'],
   3 => ['green','white'],
   4 => ['grey','red'],
   5 => ['red','grey'],
   6 => ['blue','white'],
   7 => ['white','blue'],
   8 => ['orange','grey45'],
   9 => ['grey45','orange'],
);


my $mw=tkinit;
my $c = $mw->Canvas->pack;

for (0..9) {
 my $item=$c->createRectangle($x,$y,$x+20,$y+20,
             -fill=> ${$nums{$_}}[0],
             -tags => ['rect']
          );

my $text = $c->createText($x+10,$y+10,
           -anchor=>'center',
           -fill => ${$nums{$_}}[1],
           -text => $_,
           -tags => ['num','upper-left-corner']
          );

      $x+=20;
}

$mw->Button(
    -text    => "Hide Text",
    -command => sub {
            $c->lower('num','rect');
             })->pack;

$mw->Button(
    -text    => "Show Text",
    -command => sub {
            $c->raise('num','rect');
             })->pack;
MainLoop;
[download]

zentara, thank you for your Tk pearls (or perls? :), I did hope you would give some advice and I was right - your technique seems really powerful!

As for the particular issue, my fear is that I'm going to create the same number of objects as before, if not more. In my original design, I create a Label for each of the tiny numbers, and defer the creation of the big number. In this case I still have to create a single Rectangle for each number (even if I can do some trick to defer the creation of the text). I fear that this will not improve my loading times much :/

Anyway, I'll give it a try and do some benchmarking - but probably this will be done in September ;)

Flavio
perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf

Don't fool yourself.

my fear is that I'm going to create the same number of objects as before, if not more. In my original design

Well then stick it all in a big hash and don't use objects, that is the way I usually do it. Hashes are very fast. Then you will only be creating 1 widget the canvas, and it is very fast internally to configure it's "items'. I usually end up building some big hash with all the variables tucked away nicely. You should be able to setup a hash with entries like:

$cells{ $number } {$corner }{'value'} = 9;
# and do things like:

$canvas->itemConfigure( $cells{ $number } {$corner }{'obj'} , -state=>
+disabled); #or whatever
[download]

There is a certain technique to setting up the hashes properly so you can get to anything you need. Like a text item is an item on the canvas, with a hash reference, so you can't use the hashrefs as a changable key. That is why I showed things like $cell{$number}{$corner}{'obj'} to hold the hashref and $cell{$number}{$corner}{'value'} to hold the value. However, the value can be extracted from the hashref like my $num =$canvas->itemCget($hashref, -text).

Like I said there are alot of tricks and clever things you can do with the canvas items. "Juggle with the hash" :-)

It will be faster than alot of button objects. What usually slows a canvas down is it's size, but your canvas size should be pretty small.

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I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh