Tcl - SpecTcl and/or Visual Tcl: who uses them?

Author

SpecTcl and/or Visual Tcl: who uses them?

Kevin Walzer

2004-10-22, 3:58 pm

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I'm curious to see if anyone out there uses either of these GUI builders
on a regular basis. I maintain packages of both for the Mac, but I
actually write my Tk code by hand--it's faster and more flexible.
Because that's less than a ringing endorsement of these tools, and
because the downloads of them by Mac users have been minimal, I'm
wondering if anyone on other platforms has more positive experiences to
report.

- --
Kevin Walzer, PhD
WordTech Software--Open Source Applications and Packages for OS X
http://www.wordtech-software.com
http://www.smallbizmac.com
http://www.kevin-walzer.com
mailto:sw@wordtech-software.com
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William J Giddings

2004-10-23, 8:56 am

When I first started using TCL/TK about seven years ago, I found
VisualTCl a great help in putting together my first GUI driven
utltilites. There was I time when I needed to move away however.
The GUI interface building was fine, but the extra code generated
by the package was becoming burdensome and needed thinning down.
I still have a large-ish app that uses code produced by VisualTCL
though, every time I revise, those elements are re-written.

I see that the developement on VisualTCL has slowed down. Perhaps some
simplifaction is in order. Rather than striving to be a bells-n-whistles
applications development environment, it acts to be a window 'n' widget
builder. Simply producing a loadable package with procs to generate a
window that can be fine-tuned by the programmer.

Nowadays ASED is my enivironment of choice. Perhaps some extension,
where windows, dialogs and widgets can be visually assembled would be
useful.

WJG

Donald Arseneau

2004-10-23, 8:56 am

Kevin Walzer <sw@wordtech-software.com> writes:

> I'm curious to see if anyone out there uses either of these GUI builders

I do use spectcl.

Donald Arseneau asnd@triumf.ca

Steve Redler IV

2004-10-23, 3:56 pm

Kevin Walzer <sw@wordtech-software.com> wrote in message news:<Zp8ed.3144$Ag.2646@fe37.usenetserver.com>...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I'm curious to see if anyone out there uses either of these GUI builders
> on a regular basis. I maintain packages of both for the Mac, but I
> actually write my Tk code by hand--it's faster and more flexible.
> Because that's less than a ringing endorsement of these tools, and
> because the downloads of them by Mac users have been minimal, I'm
> wondering if anyone on other platforms has more positive experiences to
> report.

I use SpecTcl for complex gui design, but do simple gui's by hand. One
of the drawbacks to SpecTcl is that it saves a gui design in a
separate file. I an working on changing that so it will save/load a
single pure tcl/tk file. I've already done this on a version of
VisualTcl where I gut all the code editing features and just use it as
a form generator which generates unpolluted tcl code.

The original maintainers of SpecTcl had a vision that the gui building
tool should just be that, and not a complete IDE. I agree with this
vision. On the the hand, SpecTcl include support for Java, Perl &
HTML. I personally have no interest in maintaining the code to support
those feature, and I feel that the codebase should be forked so that
the tcl/tk gui editor can be enhanced without concern for breaking the
other language features.

My plans are:

Gut all the Java, perl & HTML support from SpecTcl.
Rework the file load/save to work on pure tcl/tk files
Add Place geometry manager support
Add a facility to make adding new widgets very easy.

I'd like to hear from the other SpecTcl maintainers or from those of
you who have Ideas to contribute so that we can move forward to
further develop this useful tool.

Steve Redler IV

Dennis LaBelle

2004-10-26, 3:57 am

Steve Redler IV wrote:

> Kevin Walzer <sw@wordtech-software.com> wrote in message
> news:<Zp8ed.3144$Ag.2646@fe37.usenetserver.com>...
>
> I use SpecTcl for complex gui design, but do simple gui's by hand. One
> of the drawbacks to SpecTcl is that it saves a gui design in a
> separate file. I an working on changing that so it will save/load a
> single pure tcl/tk file. I've already done this on a version of
> VisualTcl where I gut all the code editing features and just use it as
> a form generator which generates unpolluted tcl code.
>
> The original maintainers of SpecTcl had a vision that the gui building
> tool should just be that, and not a complete IDE. I agree with this
> vision. On the the hand, SpecTcl include support for Java, Perl &
> HTML. I personally have no interest in maintaining the code to support
> those feature, and I feel that the codebase should be forked so that
> the tcl/tk gui editor can be enhanced without concern for breaking the
> other language features.
>
> My plans are:
>
> Gut all the Java, perl & HTML support from SpecTcl.
> Rework the file load/save to work on pure tcl/tk files
> Add Place geometry manager support
> Add a facility to make adding new widgets very easy.
>
> I'd like to hear from the other SpecTcl maintainers or from those of
> you who have Ideas to contribute so that we can move forward to
> further develop this useful tool.
>
> Steve Redler IV

Before you do all that....Have you taken a look at TKproE at:

http://tkproe.sourceforge.net/

Dennis LaBelle

2004-10-26, 3:57 am

William J Giddings wrote:

> When I first started using TCL/TK about seven years ago, I found
> VisualTCl a great help in putting together my first GUI driven
> utltilites. There was I time when I needed to move away however.
> The GUI interface building was fine, but the extra code generated
> by the package was becoming burdensome and needed thinning down.
> I still have a large-ish app that uses code produced by VisualTCL
> though, every time I revise, those elements are re-written.
>
> I see that the developement on VisualTCL has slowed down. Perhaps some
> simplifaction is in order. Rather than striving to be a bells-n-whistles
> applications development environment, it acts to be a window 'n' widget
> builder. Simply producing a loadable package with procs to generate a
> window that can be fine-tuned by the programmer.
>
> Nowadays ASED is my enivironment of choice. Perhaps some extension,
> where windows, dialogs and widgets can be visually assembled would be
> useful.
>
>
> WJG

Have you taken a look at http://tkproe.sourceforge.net/ ??

William J Giddings

2004-10-26, 9:00 am

Dennis

Thanks, I'll take a go.

Will

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