2004-11-08
<pre>
QOTW:  "While you can do these things to make a single-threaded program more
responsive, there's something to be said for allowing the OS to do some of
the work" -- Melissa Schrumpf

"Good question. I don't have a good answer though. Instead, I'd start by
focussing on the issue of what equality of lists actually means. After
all, you want to have the right type of equality, yes? :^)" -- Donal K Fellows


POTW:  hping is a "packet assembler" with enough interesting capabilities
to support its own mailing list and Wiki.  This is fascinating stuff for 
those who get "grubby" with networks.  All praise to Salvatore Sanfilippo.
    http://www.hping.org/


    GUI delays--is threading the right solution? Maybe you can tweak your
    calls to update instead.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.GSO.4.33.0410072238160.11350-100000%40aludra.usc.edu
    
    What features of a language facilitate productivity on large projects?
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m66s52-91c.ln1%40lairds.us
    
    Yes, it is possible to precompile regexps. Tcl does it for you.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=cmdcf2%246hr%241%40athen03.muc.infineon.com
    
    Use tcom to drive Excel from your tcl script. 
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1099589129.sUq8NNQy%2BqDna96kwJayrA%40teranews
    
    Which equality is right for you? Comparing a list of strings is speedy
    compared to comparing a list of numbers.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=cm7pt8%2413tt%241%40godfrey.mcc.ac.uk
    
Thanks to Arjen Markus for his report from the Wiki:
  The center of gravity of activity on the Wiki last week was "documentation".
  Just see for yourself: what packages were updated from one version of Tcl to
  the next, a "Hello, world" extension and so on. 
  
  Documentation
  - A very informative page on what will be in version 8.5 - 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10630>. (The patch releases for Tcl 8.4.x are
    described in their own pages: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12074> for instance)
  
  - Creating your own extensions - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11158> presents the
    basics.
  
  - Ever wondered about the Iwidgets extension and never got around to 
    learning it? Monitor the progress of the author of 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12898>
  
  Sharing thoughts
  - The ever growing list of articles about Tcl and its use: 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/1016> holds several new ones
  
  - The design of chips (yes, those silicon thingies inside a computer for 
    instance) bares an intimate relation to Tcl - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12897>
    muses over this ...
  
  - Is it a trick? Is it a well-designed feature? Well, 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/9967> discusses a little-known (sub)command
  
  The high and low ends of user-interfaces
  - Tile is making progress, thanks to the hard work of many people -
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11075>
  
  - Not everybody needs highly polished skins on their user-interfaces,
    a minimal amount of interactivity can be enough ... and that is 
    when you need curses - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10877>
  

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

    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>