QOTW: "Tcl has spoiled me. How do people program in a language that
doesn't have an event loop with callbacks? Threads, processes, and
migraines." -- Donal K. Fellows
"They should have conceived of the problem as one of managing focus,
not launching apps. . . . The application would be better conceived
of as a ratfink-like mouseless wm. maybe not ratfink-like, but at
least mouseless. In a sense, a wm manages screen real estate, mythtv
manages receiver occupancy/scheduling, audio channel occupation, focus.
It just does it badly." -- Colin McCormack
POTW: The Tcl/Java project hits 1.3.2 with Windows conveniences,
re-implemented IO, performance improvements (some dramatic!),
JDK 1.5 compatibility, and so on.
http://tcljava.sourceforge.net/
When you make your own buttons (listboxes, ...), you can color
and otherwise decorate them without restriction. Donald
Arsenau shows how easy Tk makes this (meta)construction.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/9e8c825e78d2be8d/
[log_user] is really only a crude stopgap. As with all things
Expect, the True Answer involves reading The Book.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/77bcaffd06909e/
David Bariod describes intelligent use of object orientation
with Expect and other Tcl applications.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/f9e132888c72f0fb/
You might know that Tcl allows (promotes?) procedures with such
names as "". Michael Cleverly knows that--and finds it useful.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/msg/25eb76c336c2fcc1?hl=en&
Michael also joins in the summer's trend of mulling over the return
values of Tcl, and especially Expect, processes.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/bbe9a288f212bea3/
Thanks to Arjen Markus for his summary of Wiki activity:
The holiday season is nearing its end and for your Wiki chronicler
it is simply hard work again ... so let us summarise the Wiki's
recent changes again too!
Educational stuff
- The Tcl tutorial is being translated into French:
any help welcome! <http://wfr.tcl.tk/983>
- Shortcuts or links or aliases on MacOS X? Whatever
they are called, <http://wiki.tcl.tk/14537>
explains them all.
- Fetch your favourite daily comic, starting
with Dilbert - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/8899>
- Irrational numbers explained (a bit) and
why discovering something that is already
known is not bad at all - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10041>
Techniques
- Calling aribtrary library functions made easy
- the very reason for the existence of ffidl!
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/1197>
- [incr Tcl] made even easier - the very
reason for this page - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/14460>
- And as we are making things easier, what about
a tiny set of functions to deal with XML or HTML?
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/14534> for starters.
- Do not do anything you can avoid doing: that
is the motto of "partial evaluation" -
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/14514>
Graphics
- Throwing a rope around interesting items
is no longer the privilege of cowboys:
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/14497>
- Show a picture and see how long that
takes ... <http://wiki.tcl.tk/4816>
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
deli.cio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary.
It already aggregates quite a bit of Tcl intelligence.
http://del.icio.us/tag/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
"Yahoo! 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
<[email protected]> 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.