Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Jan 22)
Uwe Klein
chemical refineries, transportation networks, ...--who expect their stuff to
work for decades at a time. Tcl is all about gluing together useful parts,
even when some of them come from the real world; it's not a language that
just stares at its computing-fashion navel." - Cameron Laird on c.l.t
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/msg/668261944182425c
"It sounds like you're using the wrong hammer for the job. If you have a
string and a known fixed substring, you should use the [string map]
command." - Glen Jackmann on c.l.t
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/msg/85c99c6f7b328ddd
POTW:
new library announcement by Bill Poser
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/aef9c89a12890389
In case anyone is interested, I have finished wrapping the library I
have been asking questions about and the Tcl API seems to work. The
library is libuninum. It converts Unicode strings representing integers
in nearly all known number systems (Chinese, Arabic, Armenian,
Gurmukhi, Old Persian, Klingon..) to their Western (Indo-Arabic)
decimal equivalents. (The underlying C library offers a choice of
strings, unsigned long integers, and GNU MP mpz_t objects as return
types.) You can specify the number system expected, but it will
successfully autodetect the number system in almost all cases.
Homepage:
http://billposer.org/Software/libuninum.html
http://freshmeat.net/projects/libuninum
ANNOUNCE: package lookup cache by David Keefe
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/be1fcea29e5437ed
Some time ago I noticed that on some Tcl installations it could take a
noticeable time to respond to 'package require' calls. SInce I write a
lot of Tcl in CGI scripts (yes, very retro), that sort of delay was
becoming irksome.
To that end I wrote an extension for 'package' which lets you build a
lookup table of packages and speeds up loading them very effectively.
It's built into a system I wrote called web-template and can be found
on freshmeat.
Homepage:
http://members.optushome.com.au/starters/template/
3 ANNOUNCEMENTS in one by Emmanuel Frecon
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/19dc68184355b47d
zshader:
The zshader library is a utility library that will allow to shade
(fade) away items on a Zinc canvas. The shading effect is
attained through a stepwise modification of the alpha value of
groups, which makes this library Zinc specific.
zlineedit:
The zlineedit library provides facilities for the interactive
edition of polylines on a Zinc canvas. The library provides
facilities for both the creation of polylines and for the amending of
created polylines. When all operations are allowed, the library
will arrange for users to move, remove and add vertices and to move
lines by clicking and dragging with the mouse.
update:
The updater is a library that aims at facilitating the auto-update of
software over the Internet. It will poll on demand or
regularly a location and will download any newer version posted to
that location to a local file. Newer versions are detected through
MD5 digests, which values are posted along the Internet location.
Downloads:
http://www.sics.se/~emmanuel/?Code
ANNOUCEMENT: Make replacement by Emmanuel Frecon
The make library has a twin goal: providing a pure-Tcl approach to
expressing dependencies and rules for their resolution (as in
makefiles) and automating the process of generating (Windows)
binaries that are branded with your data.
To make it short: It is a makefile-like in pure-Tcl that provides all
the binaries and kits necessary to build proper Windows binaries.
Binary production is achieved by copying all the necessary packages
from their various (more or less) standard location. By proper, I mean
binaries that have an icon and that have resource-based properties, as
displayed by the "properties" tab when you right-click on a binary
file.
Once the proper rules have been written, tclsh make.tcl yourapp will
make yourapp.exe automagically.
Download:
http://www.sics.se/~emmanuel/?Code:make
ANNOUNCE: InstallJammer Multiplatform Installer 1.1b1 Released! by Damon Courtney
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/550ec5e001f8fd16
InstallJammer is a free, open source, multiplatform
GUI installer and builder designed to be completely
cross-platform and function on Windows and most all
version of UNIX with eventual support for Mac OS X.
This is a beta release of major new features
Homepage:
http://www.installjammer.com
Downloads:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=148203
ANNOUNCE: SText 0.1 by Tim Baker
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/1a8f449bc3985135
SText is an extended Tk Text widget with features suitable for
source-code displaying and editing. Features include displaying line
numbers, syntax highlighting, code folding and linemarkers.
Homepage and Download:
http://members.shaw.ca/tnbaker/stext01/stext.html
ANNOUNCE: tkpath 0.2.2 by Mats
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/c81467d3c7ff3282
I have added a text item, called ptext, which completes this
package since all items (window disregarded) can now be replaced.
It supports the same drawing model with stroke/fill as the other
tkpath items. The font handling is not the standard Tk one and needs
some more work. See the links below for examples and screen shots.
More fixes:
o rewritten gradients for Quartz (MacOSX)
o serious bugfix when combining -matrix with move
o added -units bbox|userspace option to linear gradients
o minor fixes...
Home:
http://tclbitprint.sourceforge.net/
Screenshots:
http://tclbitprint.sourceforge.net/tkpath/quartz/index.html
http://tclbitprint.sourceforge.net/tkpath/gdiplus/index.html
http://tclbitprint.sourceforge.net/tkpath/cairo/index.html
ORBI: or what happened on comp.lang.tcl
Multithreaded DLL in Singlethreaded TCL App
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/dcaa7ca3d8585e55
Man, I love [switch]!
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/c8577d9114104173
The better if then else : switch!
Problem doing fraction comparison in TCL
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/b4066d32af6f9476
Can one 'move' scrollbars
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/839dc2ca4629c248
Viewport selection from "inside"
displaying mathematical formulas... TeX widget?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/fae40882de90aac8
Eclipse DLTK
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/fa648f30cbeccbe2
Libtool / Tcl stubs / cross-building probles....
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/1db2fca35ebcdfbd
Console a security issue on MS Windows?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/e983cffbb093d1c0
Need Canvas Tag Help
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/f11bc0074759ec85
swig question
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/46c1c75142ce25e
using typemaps and such
Remote Tcl testing on Windows from Linux
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/3ee94b786f868c3d
TIPX: new, used and discarded Tips
nothing new here, walk on.
OOTW: Orphan of the week or questions nobody answered yet:
rlogin via expect mysteriously aborts when run from cron
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/7bea2e83b16332ca
ATTC: At the Core:
[TCLCORE] MouseWheel and Text widget embedded windows.
Thanks to Arjen Markus for his Wiki report:
Did you know there are so many categories of applications?
Well, a lot have there own Wiki page, so don't be shy and
add your favourites. But there are plenty of other
pages you can read and contribute to.
Developing applications
- Why would you use an IDE? A SEE is just as nice ...
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/40> describes the idea.
- Deep thoughts on a popwerful programming concept.
Developed in the realm of the Haskell functional language,
monads can be comfortably used in Tcl too -
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/17475>
- Before you start with Apache/Rivet on Windows, have a look
at this page: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/17483> will save
you precious installation time
Useful techniques
- In need of a synchronisation mechanism that does not
depend on the OS's facilities? Plain files may solve
your problems - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/15173>
- Let your toplevel vanish from sight ... <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10515>
Or let your widgets blink - sometimes this is just what
you need. On a factory floor for instance: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/4919>
Useful collections
- Here is a package of extensions for displaying geographical
maps and the like - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/3731>
- In for a game of chess? Well, here is a database with historical
chess games - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/17490>
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
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
<cla...@phaseit.net> to subscribe. Be sure to mention "Tcl-URL!".
--
Phaseit, Inc. (http://phaseit.net) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Tcl-URL!" project.
Cameron Laird
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> Useful collections
> - Here is a package of extensions for displaying geographical
> maps and the like - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/3731>
.
.
Oops: http://wiki.tcl.tk/736