Help with Tcl/TK Web Application...

[Sundar Kumarasamy]

I am currently working on a GUI application written in Tcl/TK for Windows thin client. But this product is not developed for web browser yet. So, exploring the possibility of converting this product to web browser. Anybody has any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Dunkfan]

You could use the tclhttpd package to embed web server fucctionality to
your client. https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/TclHttpd

Pretty old now but still does the trick
Then you can add functionality such as calling Tcl
prodedures directly from html pages which return the embedded html code
in the webpage.

You would need to create template HTML pages which take their contents
from your application.
There are other Tcl mini webserver solutions

[Sundar Kumarasamy]

Hi Dunkfan,

Thanks for your response. Actually the actual desktop application is written in 4J's Genero Language with Informix Database as the backend but the menus are written in Tcl/Tk. I came across OpenACS (Open Architecture Community System) which is an advanced toolkit for building scalable, community-oriented web applications. This project is actively supported by the community now. Is this an option to take the Desktop application to web?

Thanks

[Harald Oehlmann]

Am 23.09.2022 um 20:38 schrieb Sundar Kumarasamy:
> I am currently working on a GUI application written in Tcl/TK for Windows thin client. But this product is not developed for web browser yet. So, exploring the possibility of converting this product to web browser. Anybody has any suggestions?
>
> Thanks in advance.

You may check-out cloud-tk. I suppose, you application will run without
changes.
Apen-ACS is for sure impressive as a high-availability web server.
Rivet is another one.
Or you may use a lot of TCL-written Web-servers like Wibble or the small
ones on the wiki. I personally use a small one from the wiki and it
envolved over time.
The Tk plugin is dead, no path here.

I suppose, there will be a lot of propositions following in this thread.

Take care,
Harald

[Mark Garvey]

I'm not familiar with OpenACS. Depends on your application
and expected workload I suppose. If it's a small operation
with Tcl expertise there are advantages to having the server
running inside the menu part of the application. Still the
templates for the web application need to come from somewhere.

If anyone else has pointers on how to go about this in
OpenACS then this would be a good places to post them!

[Dunkfan]

I don't have any experience with OpenACS. It may be a good
solution depending on the size and scope of what you are
planning. On the other hand having the webserver embedded in
the Menu application itself has certain advantages. If you
aren't running something for thousands of users then that
should suffice.

If someone had pointers on how to start to go about this
in OpenACS this would be a good time to post them!

[Colin Macleod]

Sundar Kumarasamy <sund...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1f9f3cc4-36fa-4ea3...@googlegroups.com:

>
> Thanks for your response. Actually the actual desktop application is
> written in 4J's Genero Language with Informix Database as the backend
> but the menus are written in Tcl/Tk. I came across OpenACS (Open
> Architecture Community System) which is an advanced toolkit for
> building scalable, community-oriented web applications. This project
> is actively supported by the community now. Is this an option to take
> the Desktop application to web?

OpenACS is a large and complex system. It can do a lot but is almost
certainly overkill for your case.

A lot depends on complicated the existing GUI code is. If it's just some
simple menus you could probably convert that to generate html, perhaps by
using Wapp - see https://wapp.tcl.tk/home/doc/trunk/README.md . If it's a
more complex GUI, e.g. something using the text or canvas widgets, Harald's
suggestion of CloudTk is probably the way to go.

Colin.