Subject: Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Aug 22)
From: Uwe Klein
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:26:46 +0000
To: "Tcl-URL distribution" :;
CC:
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl

QOTW:
    Tcl wasn't supposed to be a car.  slebetman on c.l.t
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/msg/f3e8a05fb2d2f79d
    if programming languages were cars...
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/ff4547ff7a819f67

    [I]f regexps could count they'd be turing machines.  Colin McCormack

	
POTW:
    tDOM-0.8.2 is available  by Rolf Ade
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/3e7473b397017809
    There's no special overwhelming new feature in this release. However,
    some work has been done since the last release. That includes
    * Update of the build system to TEA 3.6
    * Update of expat to the current version 2.0.1
    * Important fixes for problems on 64-bit boxes
    * The usual maintenance and bug fix work
    * Even some new features.
    The probably most notable goodies out of the new features are:
    * Much lesser pain with XPath queries w/ XML namespaced documents
      through the dom document method selectNodesNamespaces and the option
      -namespaces of the selectNodes method.
    * Tcl variable names can appear in the XPath statement of selectNodes
      at any position where it is legal according to the rules of the
      XPath syntax to put an XPath variable. The value of the variable is
      substituted for the variable name.
    Some of that is in tDOM cvs head since a long time. The new release
    brings that work to the people, which will or can not work with the
    real state of the art: tdom cvs head.
    Downloads:
	http://www.tdom.org/files/tDOM-0.8.2.tgz
    Download, win binary:
	http://www.tdom.org/files/tDOM-0.8.2-win32.tgz

    Future of TclMagick - seeking maintainer by Rolf Schroedter
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/f3d80e96a9f695cb
    Somebody of you perhaps noticed that TclMagick has not been
    significantly updated since about two years. The reason is that neither
    I nor David Welton are in a position to actively maintain TclMagick.
    So the main goal of this posting is to seek for people interested in
    maintaining the future development of TclMagick.
    An important point in this aspect is that ImageMagick(IM) and
    GraphicsMagick(GM) are diverging quickly. While GM has a quite stable
    API, IM is evolving rather dynamically (added ~170 new functions during
    the last 2 years, total of ~500 API's). Many of these new API's add new
    options to existing methods rather than new functionality.
    Currently TclMagick is hosted in the GM CVS-repository and supports
    methods common to both IM & GM. For the future of TclMagick it has to be
    discussed which way to go:
    - Support both IM & GM, hiding the differences behind the Tcl-API
    - Support only one of IM or GM
    - Diverge TclMagick into a Tcl_IM and a Tcl_GM
    The question of diverging TclMagick came up, when Pete Hardie recently
    added ~66 new IM-API's to TclMagick, trying to automate this process.
    These changes turned out to be incompatible to GM. Perhaps Pete will
    post his results to c.l.t soon.
    I personally would prefer to see TclMagick support both IM+GM or only
    the stable GM-API (least amount of work). But finally this decision
    depends on the preferences of a new maintainer (if any).

POLL:
    What's the most important thing lacking in your Tcl toolbox?
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/3c6b8fea6208dcc9

MEET:
    Tclers meet in New Orleans
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/msg/60268ffb31cfbc9b

ORBI: or what happened on comp.lang.tcl
    Question about loading a DLL
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/eeaf96a3bbacb94d

    Best GUI library for vector drawing program
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/32a0f590d66f78b6

    Bidirectional mapping
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/9b900a83ca1e5724

    Is errorInfo the only way you debug TCL
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/3835093dc09362e7
    
TIPX: new, used and discarded Tips
    nothing new here, walk on.

OOTW: Orphan of the week or questions nobody answered yet:
    tktable grouping rows
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/7f8a4c8859c21020


Thanks for Arjen Markus for his weekly summary of Wiki action:
  A bit of a quiet week on the Wiki, must be the holiday season.
  But as always, there are enough goodies to be found. So let
  the summary begin!
  
  Applications and pieces thereof:
  - Why you should seriously look into Tile - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/13636>
    has some beautiful screenshots.
  
  - One of the applications listed on that page is SQLiteStudio,
    an SQLite database manager. <http://wiki.tcl.tk/19753>
  
  - Anybody can play games, but can you make a game? Here is a 
    building block that will make that easier: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/19800>
  
  - Okay, suppose you can not or do not want to use Tile ... Tcl/Tk 8.5
    has other goodies that you can use, as <http://wiki.tcl.tk/19808>
    explains in the case of a minimal tree widget.
  
  Tools and tips 
  - Statically checking your code, with the right tools you can find
    a bug or two without running your program. Maybe this little
    page can help with arithmetic and regular expressions: 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/19804>
  
  - Tcl modules will be a new concept in 8.5 <http://wiki.tcl.tk/12999>
    - easier to deploy than a package. But how to make them? Here
    is one Wiki page that will help: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/19801>
    
  - An eternal problem, printing, and why? Perhaps because everybody
    interprets the word differently ... <http://wiki.tcl.tk/2496>
    
  
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
    comp.lang.tcl is a crucial resource for Tcl practitioners.
    An interesting perspective on its traffic appears at
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/about

    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
    There's also a high-quality Wikibook on Tcl:
        http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Tcl

    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

    "La Gazette du Técleux" is an important monthly publication.
	http://wfr.tcl.tk/1159

    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 (but
    needs to validate many of the links).
        http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

    Years ago, Cetus Links maintained a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

    "Yahoo! Groups" archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts--even 
    though clta itself is dormant.
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

We're working on more useful archives of past installments.  In the
meantime, 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!".
--
Phaseit, Inc. (http://phaseit.net) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Tcl-URL!" project.