This, nesting blocks, was the cause of my confusion with grid also (see
02/14/2001 thread). Nested blocks keep putting the widgets top-to-bottom
rather than the grid pattern I was specifying.

I now notice that the pickaxe book uses parenthesis  for all of its examples
(Ruby Tk Chapter) except for the first very basic example.

Has anyone supplied a definitive answer to this question?

> >Similarly...
> >
> >TkEntry.new(@window) {
> >      pack('side' => 'left')
> >}
> >TkButton.new(@window) {
> >      pack('side' => 'left')
> >}
> >
> >correctly puts the two side by side left to right, however
> >
> >TkEntry.new(@window) {
> >      pack {side 'left'}
> >}
> >TkButton.new(@window) {
> >      pack {side 'left}
> >}
> >
> >puts the two items top to bottom.
>
> This is because you can't nest the "block" notation with the "pack"
method.
> I don't have an explanation for why this doesn't work, but as far as I can
> tell, it does not work.  I've just resigned myself to using the
parenthesized
> form.  What is happening is that the 'pack' method is being passed no
> arguments at all, and so the default behavior (top to bottom packing) is
> occuring.
>
>
> >The pickaxe book implies that in both cases the two forms should be
> >equivalent.  What am I doing wrong?
>
> Maybe someone will shed light on this last question and englighten both
> of us. =)
>
> Jeremy