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ANNOUNCE: eTcl 1.0-rc7

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Eric Hassold

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Jun 15, 2006, 6:13:22 PM6/15/06
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I'm pleased to announce immediate availability of eTcl 1.0-rc7 for
Windows, Linux-x86, Linux-ARM, Windows Mobile (2003, 2003SE and 5.0)
pocketPC
and smartphones, and Mac OS X (Aqua) as universal binary (x86 and PPC).

WHERE TO GET
============

As usual, it is available from:
http://www.evolane.com/software/etcl/index.html

WHAT'S NEW
==========

- Windows Mobile available as a compact (Tcl/Tk core, with support
for Zip VFS, wce, and few others small extensions), standard
(same plus pixane and sqlite), and full (i.e. batteries-included)
versions, to fit different memory footprint constraints. Compact
version is 1.8MB large, and 850kb large if UPX compressed.
- A new arm-linux port
- Improved MacOSX port, with support for starting Tcl scripts from
Finder using double-clicks
- Up to date 3rd parties packages (sqlite 3.3.6, ...)
- Improved shape package, with support for applying mask to
scene (OpenGL views) widgets
- dict backport added
- updated custom toolchain for building Linux binaries
- Many bugs fixes and code optimization

WHAT IS IT
==========

eTcl is a "batteries-included", thread enabled Tcl/Tk runtime, available
as a single standalone executable for Linux (x86 and ARM), Win32, Windows
Mobile (2003 or better) and MacOSX (universal binary). On all architectures,
executable have no external dependencies.

Distributions for all architecture include a common set of core components:
- Tcl/Tk 8.4.13 (thread enabled)
- Pixane: script your image transformation, support for reading and
writing several popular image formats (PNG, JPEG), support for TrueType
fonts, several truetype builtin fonts (serif, sansserif and monotype)
- Sqlite: A SQL server in your hand.
- Zlib: native deflate/inflate support
- Zipfs: easily Mount your ZIP files into Tcl Virtual Filesystem
- TclThread: run multi-threaded applications
- TclXML: XML parsing, using expat parser
- Tls: support for SSLv2/SSLv3/Tls1.0
- Tile
- TkTable
- TkTreeCtrl
- Dict

All comments, bug reporting and feedbacks are much appreciated. You may
send them to <etcl at evolane.com>, or join eTcl page on wiki:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/15260
http://wiki.tcl.tk/eTcl

Regards,

Eric Hassold
Evolane - http://www.evolane.com/

MH

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Jun 15, 2006, 8:53:49 PM6/15/06
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In article <e6sm1p$1o29$1...@biggoron.nerim.net>,

Eric Hassold <has...@evolane.com> wrote:
>I'm pleased to announce immediate availability of eTcl 1.0-rc7 for
>Windows, Linux-x86, Linux-ARM, Windows Mobile (2003, 2003SE and 5.0)
>pocketPC

Hmm. Does pocketPC include my Casio BE-300? Or is there some revision of
pocketPC that's required?

MH

Eric Hassold

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Jun 16, 2006, 8:47:33 AM6/16/06
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MH wrote :

> Hmm. Does pocketPC include my Casio BE-300? Or is there some revision of
> pocketPC that's required?

As announced, current releases supports PocketPC and smartphone devices
running Windows Mobile 2003, 2003SE or 5.x. I don't know much about your
specific device, but unfortunatly, I believe it runs a WinCE 3.0/3.1 OS
(that is WM 2000 or 2002).

Restoring support for "older" WinCE 3.0 devices might be possible, but
requires specific build (with EVC3). Also, we don't have any such device
available for testing. Last but noit least, our resources are limited.
So we dropped support for it monthes ago. You may refer to a couple of
previous posts I made in this group:

http://groups.google.fr/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/8db494d881eaeeba/0d61c25ff7d05a6e?lnk=st&rnum=2#0d61c25ff7d05a6e
http://groups.google.fr/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/83c810616537514d/485c15f0ed220958


Eric

----

MH

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Jun 16, 2006, 2:38:37 PM6/16/06
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In article <e6u98s$2edl$1...@biggoron.nerim.net>,

Ok, that's what I thought I remembered.. Thanks for the info. I understand
the part about being limited in time and devices. I believe it's now
(mostly) WinCE 3.0 compatible, with the "Expod Gold" and a few .dll
upgrades. It runs Pocket Streets and Trips...

Hmm. How much work would it be for me to setup a dev environment that would
let me (try) to build/test it? I could certainly spend 10-20 hours on it
sometime.. If there's not a lot of $$$ involved in aquiring the build
environment.

MH

Eric Hassold

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Jun 16, 2006, 9:45:42 PM6/16/06
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MH wrote:
> Hmm. How much work would it be for me to setup a dev environment that would
> let me (try) to build/test it? I could certainly spend 10-20 hours on it
> sometime.. If there's not a lot of $$$ involved in aquiring the build
> environment.

EVC3 is (or, at least, used to be) available for free. Evocomp, our
custom build environment, still has an EVC3 configuration lying there,
so I just gave it a try, and found that I was able to successfully
compile eTcl for PocketPC 2000/2002, running on ARM/SH3/MIPS platforms.
I also found an old iPaq 3650 device (PocketPC 2002), and executable
seems to run fine on it, except (as expected) our menus and sockets
implementations, which both rely on newer (4.2+) system APIs
(respectively froù aygshell and winsock2 libraries).

If you consider such a "partial" backport useful as is (that is, with
menus and sockets not working), I'll be glad to send executable to you.
If you (or some others) would prefer a fully working distrib, and can
support us (with time, hardware and/or money) for offering WinCE 3.0
port a revival, don't hesitate to contact me and let me know ;)

Eric

jdaveb

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Jun 17, 2006, 1:04:25 PM6/17/06
to
I tried etcl on a nokia 770.
copied to /var/lib/install/usr/bin
executed etcl from an xterm
Tcl runs fine
Tk has problems:
package require Tk
brings up a gray window over the xterm.
I can get the xterm running Tcl back by selecting its icon
I can get . back using:
wm withdraw .
wm deiconify .
"toplevel .w" works, the windows act like .
"frame .w.c" nothing visual happens, but window exists according to
[winfo]
"pack .w.c" does not change anything but does not bomb
button .b -text b -command "puts hi" reboots after several second delay
"label .w.c.lbl -text label" reboots after several second delay

Eric Hassold

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Jun 17, 2006, 3:09:29 PM6/17/06
to
Thanks for giving it a try, since I don't have such device, and could
only test it on device with kdrive.

Just a doubt: did you download the executable very early after having
been announced?

On our site home page (http://www.evolane.com/), I explain I pushed a
wrong executable online for all linux platforms (x86 and arm). They were
linked against a static X11 library compiled with support for
dynamically loadable Xcursor support. When trying to change cursor in
Tk, an incompatible libXcursor.so.1 was searched and eventually loaded,
causing a segfault. Because there was a freshmeat announcement pending,
I didn't increment the release number, hoping there has been no download
in the meantime, but I guess this was definately a bad idea :-(

Could you please check the executable you used is the same available now
for download. Please let me know if it fixes the problem.

Eric

Eric Hassold

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Jun 17, 2006, 3:18:25 PM6/17/06
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Finally, here are some good news:

I took some time offering the old WinCE 3.0 code a revival, with pretty
good success. It was pretty easy to get rid of calls to newest aygshell
API to replace them with functions which were already there in WinCE
3.0. So everything (including native menus) seems to works fine. Only
sockets may still be a problem. We did'nt work on the emulation based on
winsock1 for monthes, and winsock2 emulation is so much cleaner and
robust, so I don't know what stability one may expect for this on WinCE
in the short term.

Anyway, a WinCE 3.0 (i.e. PocketPC 2000 and 2002) port, with (tested and
supported) support for ARM devices, and (untested and unsupported)
support FOR SH3 and MIPS devices, will be back with eTcl 1.0-rc8. If I
can get some feedback and comments from users still having such devices,
we will keep on providing them in the future.

Eric

-----

jdaveb

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Jun 17, 2006, 10:32:55 PM6/17/06
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I downloaded both the etcl...tar.gz and .zip files today.
cmp says they are the same
I actually tried the one from the .tar.gz file

Eric Hassold

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Jun 17, 2006, 11:27:08 PM6/17/06
to

:-(

Since it works fine on others arm-linux distributions we could test it
in, I will have to either find a way to get access to a Nokia 770, or
provide someone (you? ;-)) a debug version and sources to investigate
this. Hmmm... maybe if you could already run in inside strace, and send
me the output, this could give me some hint.

During next couple of days, I will focus on restoring and improving
support for older WinCE 3.0 devices, then I will be able to focus on
this target architecture (installing the maemo SDK will probably be a
good starting point :))

Eric

jdaveb

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Jun 18, 2006, 10:51:50 AM6/18/06
to
others have found and solved a problem with Tk and the N770

2006-01-10 stevel We now have a tclkit 8.5 (including Tk) for the 770
... for the moment it's at
http://www.digitalsmarties.com/pub/tclkit-770. Thanks to Jean-Claude
Wippler, David Zolli, Mike Doyle and especially Meredydd Luff? for his
brilliant detective work in tracking down the Xft issue that was
causing Tk to crash the 770.

from http://wiki.tcl.tk/15408

you might contact them.

MH

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Jun 19, 2006, 1:50:32 PM6/19/06
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In article <e71khv$pul$1...@biggoron.nerim.net>,

Sounds good! I'll try to play around with it in the next day or two!

MH

Steve Landers

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Jun 20, 2006, 2:41:35 AM6/20/06
to jdaveb

Yep - the issue you describe is because eTcl isn't "Hildonised". That
is, it doesn't support the WM APIs to deal with overlaying windows,
menus, etc.

Thanks to Meredydd we've got a partially Hildonised Tk and I'm doing a
bunch of work trying to get sound support going (and rapidly going crazy
in the process).

You can track my rantings at https://www.digitalsmarties.com/forum/tcl770

Steve

ps Eric, did you ever release the code that will enable us to get
vanilla tclkit working on Windows Mobile?

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