Tcl-URL! - 2002/10/01 by Larry Smith

Larry Smith

Want to keep up on the latest in Tcl? There's no better way than subscribing to "Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!: The Weekly Guide to Tcl Resources." These weekly postings will keep you up-to-date on the latest conferences, papers, releases, links, and more core information about Tcl. DDJ is proud to be associated with the Tcl-URL! team that launched this valuable project.

Tcl-URL! - 2002/10/01
 by Larry Smith

QOTW:
 ideal for large, enterprise-class applications, as the above show. It also has a simple syntax, is highly orthogonal and therefore easy to remember without hitting a manual, making it ideal for casual coding of apps by people with not a lot of experience with coding. And lastly, it's got a lot of cool extensions making it ideal for the typical programmer trying to get a job done. Aside from the foregoing, it's not especially well suited to much." ? Larry Smith

"Tcl: The Convenient Language" ? Reinhard Max

 "Tcl: The glue of a new generation."

"Tcl is to C as a convection oven is to an open fire." ? Larry Virden

"I can imagine this going from impossibility to normal practice in just a few months." ? Cameron Laird

 Tcl is all these things and more, a chimerical tool that appears in a different but useful guise to every user and every problem.

 Komodo 2.0 appears.
 http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Communications/Releases/Press1032914489.html
The newsgroup saw plenty of interesting discussion this week:

Mike Henley started off the thread is Tcl worth learning?"
which led to several of the remarks quoted above. This thread covers a lot of ground but it also provides a lot of different perspectives on Tcl and is well worth skimming.
In particular Cameron and I note several truly massive software projects built in Tcl. and here as well.

Ed Suominen chimes in with his own project as case in point.

And Will Duquette brings in insights from his usage of Perl.

Useful pointers about getting html form info to a Tcl-based cgi-script: "Passing information to TCL scripts through html forms."

An exploration of the question of "what IS a language?" Is it "just" the bare language interpreter or compiler, the language plus its standard libraries, or the sum total of all the extensions available for it? "Comparing Functionality"

Jim Macropol gets the low-down on "Downloadable papers from 2001 Tcl presentations?"

Downloadable papers from 2001 Tcl presentations?"

Glenn Jackman explains subtleties in sending email.

Liam Slider asks about one of my own favorite subjects, Artificial Life, and receives interesting pointers.

Using XOTcl with ActiveState's Tcl.

Tcl can be used almost anywhere, even in the Microsoft world - ActiveX and Tcl.

Mike Tuxford starts an interesting thread on using Tcl to implement dockable applets.

Brian Oakley brings up the question: how to obtain exit code from a pipe?"

Mel asks about using VFS to load packages via http and gets some ...interesting...responses.

Announcements:

Back on the 17th of Sept I somehow managed to miss the announcement of Iwidgets 4.0.1 from Marty Backe.

This week also saw:

The "hs" data plotting and analysis extension from Igor Volobouev

Csaba Nemethi announces his Multi-column listbox package Tablelist 2.8
and the Multi-entry widget package Mentry 2.5

Will Duquette has a new mailing list for users of the very cool Snit.

David McClamrock announces WISH CD-Writer 0.1.0.

Bryan Oakley has a new combobox 2.2.

And on the Wiki:
 Spirograph! http://mini.net/tcl/4206

 Safe Interpreters: http://mini.net/tcl/4204

 Having a Snit in Tcl: http://mini.net/tcl/3963

 New Gems: http://mini.net/tcl/918

 CanTcl - a CGI interface to an extension repository: http://mini.net/tcl/1961

 Get notice when a directory is updated: http://mini.net/tcl/3643

 Making Tcl process Bourne shell scripts: http://mini.net/tcl/2932

 Starkits have replace Tclkit/Scripted Documents: http://mini.net/tcl/3661

 Window Managers and override redirect windows: http://mini.net/tcl/4186

 A Man, a plan, a canal - Panama! - http://mini.net/tcl/4163

 Lambda in Tcl: http://mini.net/tcl/519

Starting with a few problems, here are:


The questions from the Ninth conference:  http://wiki.tcl.tk/4111.

Non-ASCII characters are handled with great ease in Tcl, but how to wring them from your keyboard? http://wiki.tcl.tk/4082 has answers.

Numerical problems are there to be solved, now with NAP, a new extension presented at the conference, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4015, the set of numerical extensions for Tcl has grown further. An overview is given in http://wiki.tcl.tk/1272.
The graphics I referred to includes:

The first animation on the Wiki brings 3D shapes, all scripted, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4035.

This game of chess is not the first in Tcl, but it sure looks great, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4070.

A few technical issues _and_ man-machine communication as the third category:

Interacting with databases is discussed in some length at http://wiki.tcl.tk/620.
Whereas interaction with other human beings is what this commercial application is all about, a forum for discussion, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4126.
Mini web browsers in Tcl, what will Richard and George think of next, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4105.
Do you love the prefix style of Tcl? You can apply it to arithmetic operations with this script, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4085.
 Graphics and games:

Keith Vetter contributes a three-dimensional maze and a spirograph (remember your childhood?) at http://wiki.tcl.tk/4188 and http://wiki.tcl.tk/4206

Leave to Richard Suchenwirth to do fun things with Tk's stipples, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4163 visualises a sluice with a ship and all.

Taking control of the screen:

 The Tk feature "overrideredirect" is powerful, yet somewhat mysterious, check out http://wiki.tcl.tk/4186 and http://wiki.tcl.tk/3236. It makes it possible to make an apllication that works in full-screen mode.

Techniques for the advanced programmer:

 Are you familiar with XML? Then this use of XPath queries might be just what you need, http://wiki.tcl.tk/4193

Terminating a program may not be the end of all the users' data. Persistent applications make sure that their state is safely saved. How? Check: http://wiki.tcl.tk/2238

Many times people ask for a way to check the changes in the contents of a directory.

Well, this page does not have the definitive answer yet, but let us contribute: http://wiki.tcl.tk/3643

And finally, the announcements of several Tcl Users' Groups on the c.l.t. have inspired the creation of http://wiki.tcl.tk/4207. Just add your group!

And the next time your boss asks you to do something in Perl:
 http://mini.net/tcl/1579

There's more - lots more - but I have to stop somewhere. Do yourself a favor:
 http://wiki.tcl.tk/