Tcl - Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Oct 24)

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Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Oct 24)

Cameron Laird

2005-10-24, 9:57 pm

QOTW: "Don't fight with the WM; it will always win." --Joe English

"I don't think I would ever advertise specifically for a Tcl programmer,
[...] just as I don't advertise for people who can use a pocket calculator:
if you don't know how today, you will by next w

." -- Steve Blinkhorn

POTW: Despite the density of buzzword compliance in its advertising,
NetKitWorks is a real and useful (Tcl-based!) product for management
of networks and their components.
http://www.netkitsolutions.com/web/...etkitworks.html

If you have *any* practical way to get to Portland, do yourself
a favor and join the Twelfth Tcl/Tk Conference. The Tutorials
alone are sure to give great value.
http://wiki.tcl.tk/13846

Bryan Oakley provides "a solution of ease and elegance" which
illustrates use of validatecommand. Make sure you read through
to the explanation of resetting -validate.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...5d99b59b9d0b9f/
Bryan also describes sensible scrollregion management.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...a31a0d3d40e779/

Microsoft--or at least some of its workers--is aware of Tcl.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/msh.ars/6

Tcl twiddles bits.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...64742ce5ddc4de/

Thanks to Arjen Markus for his so-accurate summary of Wiki activity:
Quite a few pages on topic from the field of artifical intelligence
surfaced last w

and there is quite some interest in the text
widget ...

Artificial intelligence
- Data structures in AI are quite different than in, say, OO.
Care to have a look at Petri nets or Retes? Here is
the page on the latter: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/8365>

- AI has its own specific needs for a development environment.
SOAR is such an environment - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/7447>

- Talking of IDEs ... here is one for web-development:
Myrmeco - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/2129>

The text widget
- Let us start with a French contribution: VisualSQLite
- <http://wfr.tcl.tk/240> - allows you to manipulate
your SQLite database.

- Autocorrecting typed text - or alternatively using it
as a shorthand - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/9022>

- Get the contents of a text widget and examine it
- <http://wiki.tcl.tk/3246>

- And then: how do you know the contents has changed?
Easy, as the bottom of this page shows:
<http://wiki.tcl.tk/881>

From text to mere strings
- The revival of a very old page: there are never
enough functions for strings - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/44>

- A flat file and the need to jump to the right place
- <http://wiki.tcl.tk/14025>

A game to take our mind off of things
- Just an old game, but nice anyway: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/4236>

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

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
http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

Cetus Links maintains a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

"Yahoo! Groups" archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/
An alternative is
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=...p=comp.lang.tcl

Suggestions/corrections for next w

's posting are always welcome.

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday, ask
<claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe. Be sure to mention "Tcl-URL!".
--
Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Tcl-URL!" project.

Ralf Fassel

2005-10-25, 3:57 am

* Cameron Laird <tcl-url@phaseit.net>
| Microsoft--or at least some of its workers--is aware of Tcl.
| http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/msh.ars/6

I wondered how you came to that conclusion until I read up to:

<quote>
Linux users often use the Tk library to produce simple graphical
utilities. With MSH and the .NET Winforms API, Windows users can also
produce graphical interfaces within scripts or from the command
line. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to bind MSH commands to
GUI events, so users can't produce complete graphical utilities. In a
Microsft technet chat transcript, Microsoft developer Jeffrey Snover
says that they have constructed an experimental set of Cmdlets that
provide user interface construction capabilities inspired by Tk, but
they don't plan to include those Cmdlets in the first major release.
</quote>

LOL. I wonder what a GUI is worth if the buttons are really just
labels, and no 'bind' command is at hand...

R'

suchenwi

2005-10-25, 7:58 am

Reading about MSH, I had the feeling as if the giant was rubbing his
eyes, waking up to see what other *sh there have been since the 1970s
:)

But they also have some concepts that may be worth thinking about for
Tcl...

newtophp2000@yahoo.com

2005-10-25, 9:57 pm

Cameron Laird wrote:
> If you have *any* practical way to get to Portland, do yourself
> a favor and join the Twelfth Tcl/Tk Conference. The Tutorials
> alone are sure to give great value.
> http://wiki.tcl.tk/13846

For those of us not able to attend, is there someway to get the
conference proceedings? Do they publish the papers that are presented
or the tutorials?

David Gravereaux

2005-10-28, 9:56 pm

suchenwi wrote:
> Reading about MSH, I had the feeling as if the giant was rubbing his
> eyes, waking up to see what other *sh there have been since the 1970s
> :)

Ditto! My brother is a .NET developer and we're talking a couple
Christmases ago and he mentions how M$ is working on a new dynamic code
thing.

Whee.. ya mean like /EVAL/ ??? What a fantastic idea.. It must be
sooo new then? hehe :) VBA was dynamic, sorta..

> But they also have some concepts that may be worth thinking about for
> Tcl...

I like the consistency of the interfaces myself, I'm sure there's much more.

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