ANN: the Tcl'ers Wiki
Jean-Claude Wippler
The Tcl'ers Wiki is a vibrant Tcl resource, "powered by people".
Whether you are looking for information about Tcl, extensions, and
applications, or interested in browsing through a range of coding
techniques, brainwaves, opinions, even discussions, start here:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/
or here: http://mini.net/tcl/
The content of this wiki is and will always remain public, and free
of advertising. The website runs on a stable, lightly-loaded, and
well-connected server (see http://mini.net/tcl/24 for details). It
illustrates that some things in life can still be fun *and* free :)
To find out about the "wiki wiki" idea which started it all, see:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors
HOW TO USE IT
There are thousands of pages. Like all breeding places of creative
activity, the wiki is a chaotic spot. There is no "main" page, nor
even a "top-down" hierarchical overview. Your best bet is to spend
a bit of time and look at "Recent changes", "Welcome visitors", and
other starting points listed on the above homepage.
Another way is to start with a keyword, e.g.
http://mini.net/tcl/beginning
http://mini.net/tcl/book
http://mini.net/tcl/extension
http://mini.net/tcl/Suchenwirth
http://mini.net/tcl/tip
Note that "extension" will find "extensions" but *not* vice versa.
Wiki searches are not perfect, if you're not getting anywhere, try:
As imperfect as they are, searches do tend to be extremely focused,
often leading to a narrower set than, say, googling "expect".
ALTERNATIVE URLS
Each page on the wiki has a permanent unique numeric ID. The home
page is id "0", for example. The list of recent changes is at "4".
So the URL for the "Recent changes" page is in fact simply:
As of today, three base URLs all refer to the same wiki:
wiki.tcl.tk/ is the "nice" way to pass references around
purl.org/tcl/wiki/ is a fallback option - in case of breakdown
mini.net/tcl/ is the "real" location where the wiki lives
The first two of these are HTTP redirects to that last one.
When you bookmark a page, be sure to always bookmark one of these
forms - either with a page ID, or with a search keyword/phrase.
It may be a bit confusing, but the fact is that all too frequently
the "wiki.tcl.tk" URL is either too slow or refuses to work at all,
so having the other two alternatives seems like good insurance.
YOU CAN PARTICIPATE
The magic of the wiki is that its contents is editable by anyone
(full history is tracked, making vandalism essentially futile).
That means you can contribute sample code, share insights, add to
what there is already - anything really which you feel is of use
to others and related to Tcl. Discussions are no doubt best left
to this newsgroup and the Tcl'ers Chat, but for information that
deserves to stay around (especially if collaboration / maintenance
is desired) the wiki has proven to be a pretty effective spot.
STATUS AND FUTURE
The wiki has just been refurbished a bit. One aspect which really
needs to be stressed is that all other ways of accessing the wiki
(i.e. URL's containing "cgi-bin") will eventually be phased out.
A fact which is perhaps not widely known, is that the entire wiki
can be downloaded and run *offline* with a local Tk GUI interface.
It's all described on the wiki. You can expect this to become yet
more practical once automatic change propagation gets added.
The contents of the wiki could benefit from sort sort of reorg,
perhaps just by adding more "categories" or a few well-structured
overview pages. Hmmm... is this perhaps worth a new wiki page?
-jcw
lvi...@yahoo.com
According to Jean-Claude Wippler <j...@equi4.com>:
: The contents of the wiki could benefit from [some] sort of reorg,
: perhaps just by adding more "categories" or a few well-structured
: overview pages. Hmmm... is this perhaps worth a new wiki page?
The thing here is that what one person sees as perfectly well structured
or organized can be quite frustrating to someone else. That's what is nice
about Wikis. If someone comes along and thinks "wow, there's lots of good
info here on the wiki - it is just tough to find", they can just step right
up, create a new page, and organize things in the way their brain works.
If another person comes along and says "oh my, I would never think of looking
for information about Tk by searching for "Tk" - I want things organized
by general categories", why, they can create categories, tag pages appropriately
etc.
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