2004-10-04
<pre>
Thanks to John Seal for his help preparing this week's digest.

QOTW: "creating new control structures via [uplevel] or [eval] is all 
sorts of fun"
     -- Neil Madden

"Tcl is both insanely easy to learn and very difficult to learn for 
different people"
     -- Bryan Oakley


POTW: Tcl/Tk Language Tutorial by Binny V A.
This is not actually a program, but rather an HTML-based Tcl/Tk 
tutorial.  It was mentioned recently in a lengthy discussion on
comp.lang.tcl about the relative ease of learning Tcl/Tk compared
to other languages.
        http://www.geocities.com/binnyva/code/tcl/tutorial/index.html
    

    Is Tcl easy to learn? Yes, but you might need to unlearn a bit.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a264fc1802d240c3
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=4abd3afd19df6b9e

    [split] is a very useful when you want to turn a comma separated string 
    into a list, but how do you split on a group of characters?
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=41e8de64806d4f91
    
    If you compare 60.9 with 69.9 - 9.0, [expr] will tell you they are not 
    the same. This may seem unexpected, but is easy to explain when you 
    understand a tiny bit about floating point math.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b0e052723a9bfd22
    
    Threading can be a useful tool if you need to do a lot of computations 
    and need keep your user interface responsive, but there are simpler ways 
    to get it done in Tcl.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=c281b10b99cabb1c
    
    Want do display an image from a website with just five lines of code?     
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=ac389112997ff336

     Seems like people are often asking how Tcl can use the full screen.
     TIP #223 to  the rescue!
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=17614cb515122bfd

     The upcoming Tcl-2004 conference: So many tutorials, sessions,
     and papers... so little time!
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6c54787da1befb16

     If you want to bind things to a single-click, then you might also
     want to ignore double-clicks:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=4b81585a613076f8

Thanks to Arjen Markus for his report from the Wiki:
  This week, let us just list the pages that your Wiki chronicler found 
  interesting for whatever reason: otherwise we would have as many categories
  as pages - it must be the leaves falling in this time of year on the northern
  hemisphere.
  - Make your Internet browser listen to you: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/2135> 
    has the receipes for a popular one.
  
  - Chat and be heard (well, read): tkabber is a nice tool, as 
    <http://wfr.tcl.tk/309> on the French Wiki witnesses
  
  - Ah, lists, almost as fundamental to Tcl as strings ... another shot
    at "list comprehension" at <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12574>
  
  - Now you see me, now you don't? No more hide-and-seek for icons in 
    a Windows executable - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12569>
  
  - Well, you may not identify the (natural) language for 100% certainty
    but try it anyway. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can
    always go the computational way (just follow the URL ...)
    - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10261>
  
  - Here are two shots at that awesome XML stuff (note the double meaning
    of the word "awesome"):
    - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12550> is a further elaboration of a wonderful
      little XML browser/editor
    - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12529> is a fearless endeavour to achieve
      validation of an XML file 
  
  - Just to keep the balance straight - the above is all too serious -
    here is a little toy: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12558>
  
  
Everything Tcl-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these
pages:
    The "Welcome to comp.lang.tcl" message by Andreas Kupries
        http://www.purl.org/net/tcl-welcome

    The Tcl Developer Site is Tcl's "home base".
	http://www.tcl.tk

    The Eleventh Mostly-Annual Tcl Conference will be this October.
	http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2004/

    Larry Virden maintains a comp.lang.tcl FAQ launcher
        http://www.purl.org/NET/Tcl-FAQ/

    The Tcl Developer Xchange is a highly organized resource center
    of documents and software with provisions for individuals to
    maintain references to their own software:
        http://www.tcl.tk/resource/
    The TDX sponsor, ActiveState, also keeps info to convince your
    boss Tcl is a good thing
        http://www.tcl.tk/scripting/

    The Tcl'ers Wiki is a huge, dynamic, collaboratively edited repository
    of documentation, examples, tutorials and pontifications on all things 
    Tcl.
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/0
    For the ideal overview of the topics about Tcl most likely to
    interest a newcomer, see "Arts and Crafts ..."
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/969

    ActiveState maintains binaries distribution and development tools
        http://www.activestate.com/Tcl
    along with a Cookbook of Tcl recipes
        http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Tcl

    Cameron Laird tracks several Tcl/Tk references of interest
        http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

    Cetus Links maintains a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

    Google Groups archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/
An alternative is
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Tcl-URL&as_ugroup=comp.lang.tcl

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday, ask
<claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe.  Be sure to mention "Tcl-URL!".
--
Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Tcl-URL!" project.
</pre>