Table of Contents
[hemmerling] Tcl / Tk ( tickle ) 1/2
Related page:
Conferences and Seminars
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- Google+ "11th European Tcl/Tk User Meeting" in Munich, 2013-07-06.
- Google+ "12th European Tcl/Tk User Meeting" in Munich, 2014-07-12 - 2014-07-13.
- I was one of the 26 participants of the European Tcl/Tk User Meeting "13th European Tcl/Tk User Meeting" in Cologne, 2014-06-20 - 2015-06-21
.
- In 2015, the electronics distributor Silica (An Avnet Company) offered free seminars in Germany about TCL/TK, like “Seminar VIVADO Tool Flow + TCL/TK”.
- The free online conferences “SQLite & Tcl 2020 (Virtual Event)”, 2020-11-10 & “The SQLite & Tcl Conference (S&T) 2021”, 2021-11-17.
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- 2020.
- 2021.
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Videos
- YouTube Channel "Tcl/Tk Video" - Videos of the US conference “Tcl/Tk Conferences” and of the European conferences “EuroTcl”.
Runtime
Installable Runtimes
The Original Implementation for Linux and Windows
ActiveTcl
- ActiveTcl Community Edition - Tcl for Windows.
- ActiveTcl Community Edition 8.5.18 ( TCL 8.5, TK 8.5 ) is the latest edition for W2k.
- ActiveTcl Community Edition 8.6 is just for WinXP and newer.
Pat Thoyts
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- Pat Thoyts "TclKit: bleeding-edge builds", in 2015 newest pre-builts:
- 32-bit Windows: Tcl/Tk 8.5.13 and Tcl/Tk 8.6.4.
- 32-bit Linux: Tcl/Tk 8.5.10.
- 64-bit Linux: Tcl/Tk 8.6.2.
Legacy installable Runtimes
- Google Code "tclkit. Self-contained runtime for Tcl/Tk" - Tcl/Tk 8.5.8 is the newest pre-built, in 2015.
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- Equi4Software "Tclkit downloads" - Tcl/Tk 8.5.2 is the newest pre-built in 2015.
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Re-Implementations & Ports to other Platforms
AndroWish
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- YouTube "superlinux" - “SuperLinux - The Linux and TCL Company”.
- Tim Baker "SDLTk" - “SDLTk is the Tk GUI drawn completely inside an SDL surface... Tk thinks it is running under X11.
- Simple DirectMedia Layer ( SDL ) - “A cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D”.
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Browser Plugins
- The legacy Tcl Developer Xchange "Tcl Plugin", SourceForge "Tcl/Tk Plugin", SourceForge "Tcl/Tk Plugin" for Firefox. Does not work with current Firefox versions ( e.g. Firefox 12, 13,..).
The Eagle Project
- The Eagle Project for Windows with .NET 2.0 - “Eagle (Extensible Adaptable Generalized Logic Engine) is an implementation of the Tcl scripting language for the Common Language Runtime (CLR)”.
Jim
Tcl for Windows CE
- SourceForge "Tcl 8.3 for Windows CE", SourceForge "tclce" by Akos Polster.
Tcl Hosting
IDEs, GUI Builders, Tools
IDEs & Editors with Tcl Support
- The OpenSource IDE Andreas Sievers "ASED Tcl/Tk IDE", written in pure Tcl/Tk.
- Makes use of core.tcl.tk - "Bwidget".
- “Now also available as Starpack (single executable file) for Windows”.
- The OpenSource IDE “Eclipse” with “Dynamic Languages Toolkit” ( DLTK ) - See Software Development Tools.
- Eclipse for PHP Developers is shipped with DLTK.
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- The OpenSource IDE Alexey Kakunin "TCL Developer Studio".
- Makes use of SourceForge "Tix", SourceForge "Tix".
- The OpenSource IDE Alexey Kakunin "TCL Developer Studio, Second Version".
- Makes use of core.tcl.tk - "Bwidget".
- The commercial IDE KomodoIDE by ActiveState.
- The commercial IDE MyrmecoX.
- The OpenSource IDE NetBeans.
- NetBeans Plugins "Tcl Plugin" for Netbeans 7.2 - “Syntax Highlight, Create/Open Tcl Projects And Files, Run Tcl Files, Debugger”.
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- Project of the Google Summer Of Code 2011.
- Source code repositories for “TclPlugin”, “antlrgrammar”, “examples”.
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- On Ubuntu 14.04, NetBeans 8.02 works properly with the plugin.
- At “Options / Tcl”, the tclsh path is set for Linux ”/user/bin/tclsh” by default, properly.
- The default “start.tcl” script is executed by
>>> /usr/bin/tclsh 1 % set ::tcl_interactive 1 % % /usr/bin/tcls process exited with 0 status. Output window INACTIVE.
- On Windows, the plugin doesn´t work both with NetBeans 8.02 and 7.4:
- At “Options / Tcl”, the tclsh path is set for Linux ”/user/bin/tclsh”.
- If you try to execute a Tcl script of a Tcl project, there is a modal error window with the message “Please set correct Tclsh path using Tools → Options Tcl tab.”.
- The Tcl shell “Tclsh.exe” is installed on Windows at e.g “c:\Program Files\tcl\bin\Tclsh.exe”.
- If you change this path to the location of the Tclsh.exe on Windows “c:/Program Files/tcl/bin/Tclsh.exe” ( or “c:/int/w32/develop/tcl/bin/tclsh.exe” on my machine ), Netbeans may execute Tclsh.exe.
- Unfortunately, Tclsh aborts with the error message
>>> c:/tcl/bin/tclsh.exe 1 % set ::tcl_interactive 1 % % wrong # args: should be "cd ?dirName?"
- Netbeans may not call Tclsh.exe by the Linux settings and Windows Shortcuts.
- Create the directory “C:\usr\bin”.
- In this directory, create a symbolic link “tclsh.lnk” to the location of Tclsh, by Right-Mouseclick “New / Shortcut”.
- By this, Tclsh may be called by COMMAND.COM by “\usr\bin\tclsh.lnk” from the same drive, and by “c:\usr\bin\tclsh.lnk”.
- As Windows depends on file extensions, you may not call Tclsh by “\usr\bin\tclsh”
, after renaming “tclsh.lnk” to “tclsh”. - Netbeans does not accept to call Tclsh by “tclsh.lnk” after setting the tclpath to “c:/usr/bin/tclsh.lnk” - it still asks “Please set correct Tclsh path using Tools → Options Tcl tab.”.
- On Windows, setting the Tclsh path to an invalid path, may cause Netbeans to block the computer by a modal window which consumes all computing power ( so you can´t even switch to another Windows window to access the Windows task manager, so that you have to logout.
- The OpenSource IDE RamDebugger - “A debugger and IDE for TCL-TK”.
- There are no line numbers visible at the editor pane. But you can see the line number of the cursor in the status line on the window bottom. Also you can see/go to line with Edit→Go to line (CTRL-G).
Editors with some Tcl Support ( for Highlighting,..)
- The OpenSource editor Geany for Linux and Windows.
GUI Building Tools & Interactive application Development Environment
- The OpenSource GUI builders “SpecTcl and GUI Builder” → See Python 8/10 - IDEs & GUI Designers. “SpecTcl” may generate TCL code. In the “*.ui” files, you can select that by the statement “language tcl 8.4”.
- Archive.org "Sawpit" ( - 2008-05-09 ) - The OpenSource GUI builder “tkBuilder” by Frank Schnekenburger.
- Fork:
- The OpenSource GUI builder SourceForge "tkBuilder for tcl 8.4", SourceForge "tkBuilder for tcl 8.4".
- The OpenSource GUI builder SourceForge "TCL/TK Programming Environment", SourceForge "TCL/TK Programming Environment" - “TKproE is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for building TCL/TK programs”.
- The OpenSource GUI builder “Visual Tcl” by Stewart Allen.
- High-quality application development environment... Visual Tcl is written entirely in Tcl/Tk and generates pure Tcl/Tk code.
- Fork:
- The OpenSource GUI builder “PAGE - Python Automatic GUI Generator” is based on “Visual Tcl”, ( still ) generates TCL code, but the TCL code is incomplete and can´t run → See Python 8/10 - IDEs & GUI Designers.
- Documentation.
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- Starpacks ( for Windows ) are “just binary” editions ( for Windows ) and don´t contain demo code and demo projects, by definition.
- The latest source code archive “vtcl-1.6.1a1.tar.gz” contains 2 directories with demo code and demo projects:
- demo.
- sample.
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| GUI Editor | Generated Code uses Namespace? | Namepace Name? |
|---|---|---|
| SpecTcl and GUI Builder | yes | Basename of ”.ui” File |
| Visual Tcl by Stewart Allen | no | - |
Free Online IDE
- The free online service Steven Hazel "Codepad" - “Online compiler/interpreter ( for C, C++, D, Haskell, Lua, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Plain Text, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Tcl ) and a simple collaboration tool. Paste your code below, and codepad will run it and give you a short URL you can use to share it in chat or email”.
Resources
Packaging
Tools
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- “The SDX utility has a few convenient options to create, inspect, and unravel Starkits”
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- Download of SDX utility: “sdx.bat”, “sdx.kit”
- Download of “starkit.tar.gz”.
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Examples of packaged Tcl/Tk Applications
- Tcl Developer Xchange "Tcl/Tk Starkits" - Download of StarKit-packed applications.
Resources
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- “Tclkit is a compact, single file executable containing a complete scripting runtime, including a rich scripting language (Tcl), a high-level GUI toolkit (Tk), a powerful object system (IncrTcl), the Tcl Virtual File System (TclVFS), and an embedded high-performance database (Metakit)”.
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- “A Starkit is a wrapping mechanism for delivering an application in a self-contained, installation-free, and highly portable way. The name comes from being based on a StandAlone Runtime, called Tclkit”.
- Roy Keene "vTcl" - “starpack-vtcl.sh is the shell script used to generate these starpacks from the unmodified vTcl source code”.
Repositories
Free Online Repositories
- The official Tcl repository tool “Teacup”.
- The public repository directory ActiveState Teapot.
- “Teacup” is shipped with ActiveTcl distribution at “C:\Program Files\Tcl\bin\teacup.exe”.
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- SourceForge "Fossil-SCM Demo", username “admin”, password: “admin”
- Chisel Fossil SCM Hosting - “Free. Chisel offers an unlimited number of fossil repositories. Its codebase is free software, licensed under the ISC license”.
Resources
- Fossil - “A simple, high-reliability, distributed software configuration management system”.
Applications, Frameworks, Libraries
Applications
- The OpenSource TkSQLite - “A GUI database manager for SQLite implemented by Tcl/Tk”.
- SourceForge "TclX", SourceForge "Extended Tcl (TclX)", Archive.org "NeoSoft, Mark Diekhans and Karl Lehenbauer - Homepage for Extended Tcl" ( - 2003-04-16 ) - “Extends Tcl by providing new operating system interface commands, extended file control, scanning and status commands and many others”.
- SourceForge "TkCon", SourceForge "TkCon: Enhanced Tk Console" - “An enhanced interactive console for developing in Tcl. It also has the ability to connect to other Tk send-enabled languages, as well as generically to sockets”.
Web Frameworks
For AOL Server
AOL Server
- GitHub.io "AOLserver", GitHub "AOLserver", SourceForge "AOLserver", SourceForge "AOLserver. High-performance multithreaded web server" - “A multithreaded, Tcl-enabled, massively-scalable and extensible web server tuned for large scale, dynamic web sites. AOLserver also includes complete database integration and a dynamic page scripting language”.
ArsDigita Community System" ( OpenACS )
- OpenACS - “The Toolkit for Online Communities”.
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- “The ACS was originally written in Tcl to run on an AOLserver web server and an Oracle database. In 2001, the code tree was forked, with the Tcl code base being maintained and refactored by one group of developers... and official support for the Tcl version ceased. However, the Tcl version continued to be maintained by the OpenACS community”.
- )project-open(, SourceForge ")project-open( - Project Management", SourceForge ")project-open( - Project Management".
- ]project-open[ "Architecture FAQ" - ”]project-open[ is based on AOLServer and the OpenACS platform.”.
For Apache Server
Apache
Web Frameworks
Tcl Web Server
- tänzer, GitHub "xantronix/tanzer" - “Minimalistic web server framework for Tcl which provides a very straightforward environment for writing HTTP/1.1 web applications”.
Some other Network Frameworks
Resources
- Tcler's Wiki "Web framework" - “A list of web frameworks for Tcl”.
Some other Frameworks, Libraries
- Database support.
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- TDBC, GitHub "tcltk/tdbc", a new package introduced with Tcl 8.6.
- Tcl/Tk Documentation > TDBC Package Commands - “Tcl Database Connectivity (TDBC) is a common interface for Tcl programs to access SQL databases” ( mysql, odbc, postgres, sqlite3 ).
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- Andreas Kupries "CRIMP" - “The C Raster Image Manipulation Package, a set of extensions of Tcl for the handling and processing of images”.
- Java & Tcl.
- OLE support on Windows.
- SOAP support.
- SourceForge "Tcl/Tk @ SF", SourceForge "Tcl" - “The core development home for Tcl (Tool Command Language, pronounced tickle) and the Tk toolkit”.
- SourceForge "tcllib", SourceForge "tcllib" - “The core development home for the tcllib standardized Tcl library”.
- TclOO.
- GitHub "tcltk/tcloo" - “Tcl OO Package (for Tcl 8.5, integrated in 8.6). (Mirror of core.tcl.tk)”.
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- As with Tcl/Tk 8.6, with object orient software based on TclOO, objects are not destroyed automatically after use as used from Java, C++ and C#. It is up to the application to destroy objects when they become invalid!
- TkDND.
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- SourceForge "tkImg", SourceForge "tkImg" - “The 'Img' package adds a lot of image formats to Tcl/Tk”.
- Windows.
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- SourceForge "CAWT. Com Automation With Tcl", SourceForge "CAWT. Com Automation With Tcl" - “Based on Twapi to script Microsoft Windows applications with Tcl. It provides high level procedures for automation via the COM interface”.
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Big Tcl Applications
- Both the FPGA IDEs of Altera and Xilinx are driven by Tcl scripts.
- The OpenSource GUI builder “PAGE - Python Automatic GUI Generator” is based on “Visual Tcl”, ( still ) generates TCL code, but the TCL code is incomplete and can´t run → See Python 8/10 - IDEs & GUI Designers
- The legacy slide presentation software Perspecta Presents.
- Tcler's Wiki "Tcl chronology" - 1993, Tcl 6.5: “Perspecta Software formed. Perspecta Presents, a presentation software package using Tcl commands, was the company's first, and only, product”.
- “Visual Tcl - The SCO Toolkit”.
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- The accompanying CD is shipped with the “Visual Tcl” software framework for Tcl 7.3.
- “The Visual Tcl language was expressly designed to be a powerful, easy-to-use GUI development tool for the system administrator” of a Unix / Linux system.
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- “WebWiseTclTk”.
- Archive.org "CBL Software Index " ( - 2003-11-04 ).
- Archive.org "The WebWiseTclTk Toolkit Home Page" ( - 2003-11-03 ) - Software download.
- “The WebWiseTclTk toolkit is an enhancement of the existing feature set of Safe-Tcl and Safe-Tk, without compromising security. The toolkit re-defines the functionality of the auto_load mechanism in Tcl such that it works for packages located anywhere on the World Wide Web. It also re-introduces several commands not available in Safe-Tk such as toplevel and menu to provide a much richer feature set of Tk commands. The toolkit is written entirely in Safe-Tcl/Tk and uses the home policy for running applications as Tcl-plugins”.
- “The toolkit supports (1) creation of new Web-based Tcl applications with greatly enhanced functionality, and (2) migration of existing Tcl applications to the Web by merely writing an encapsulation script. We demonstrate the capabilities of the WebWiseTclTk toolkit by readily creating an encapsulation script for Web-based execution of the Tk Widget Demonstrations, distributed with the core Tcl/Tk”.
Big Applications with Tcl Interface
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- “Access winIDEA from a Tcl application”: iSYSTEM AG "SDKs - winIDEA" - There is an SDK, “isystem.connect SDK”, for the commercial edition of the Windows IDE “winIDEA”. “iSYSTEM.Tcl.SDK-9.12.68.zip” of 2014-06 is the latest edition.
- The commercial Zeal SoftStudio.
- Zeal SoftStudio "NTPort Library" - “Additional Samples”, “TCL/TK Samples”.
- “All these samples are tested under ActiveTCL for Windows 8.4.12. Németh József Gábor's DLL caller is used in these samples”.
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- Some of the sample files were created using the GUI designer “Visual Tcl”.
Tcl - The Language
Bad Rating
- Tcler's Wiki "Perspecta", about Tcl 6.5 as of 1994 - “In Tcl, the programmer is forced to write such functions in C, negating some of the benefit of using Tcl in the first place. For example, the Perspecta Presents! slide-making program consists of ~29,000 lines of C code and only ~13,000 lines of Tcl code”.
Special Topics
- append - concat - lappend.
- Auto-generated list of numbers.
- Dictionaries.
- I was told by experts, Tcl dictionaries are similar to Json, but not identical.
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- Namespaces.
- Cliff Flynt: "Tcl/Tk. A Developer's Guide", page 215:
- “Note that using namespaces to implement inheritance is implemented in the opposite way as C++ or Java-style inheritance. In C++ and Java, a child class inherits functionality down from a parent, whereas in Tcl a primary namespace can inherit functionality up from a nested namespace”.
- “If two or more namespaces need functionality that exists in a third namespace, there are a couple of options. They can create a shared copy of the third namespace in the scope of the first two namespaces, or each can create a copy of the third namespace nested within its own namespace. One advantage of nesting the third namespace is that it creates a unique copy of the persistant data defined within the third namespace. If a namespace is shared, that data is also shared”.
- “Note that whereas procedures can be imported from any namespace, regardless of his parent/child relationship, variables cannot be imported. If your design requires separate copies of data, you must have separate copies of the namespace, The namespace copies can be placed at any positon in the namespace hierarchy, but it is simplest to inherit the functionality from child namespaces”.
- Printing.
- Comparison Tcl to other Programming Languages.
Tutorials
- Tcl Developer Xchange "Tcl Tutorial" for Tcl 8.5.
Tcl Experts
Literature
Books about Tcl/TK
- Book Steven Ball: "Web Tcl Complete, w. CD-ROM" ( 1998 ).
- Clif Flynt.
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- The OpenSource Clif Flynt "htmlview.tcl: A simple HTML viewer", with download offer of “htmllib.tcl.gz” V0.3.4.
- Archive.org "wuarchive.wustl.edu/languages/tcl/" ( - 2004-08-31 ) - “html_library-0.3.tar.gz”.
- The free computer aided instruction package Clif Flynt "TclTutor".
- These tools can be used to access the man pages from TclTutor:
- Book Clif Flynt: "Tcl/Tk. A Developer's Guide" ( 2003 ) / Clif Flynt: "Tcl/Tk. A Developer's Guide" ( 2012 ) #.
- Book Clif Flynt: "Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers, w. CD-ROM" ( 1998 ).
- The accompanying website for the 2.nd edition of the book Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide.
- Elsevier store "Tcl/Tk, 3rd Edition. A Developer's Guide" → Free downloads:
- Online Companion Materials.
- There is a faulty link to the code zip file “Chapter 19.xmpl”, the right link is chapter_19.zip.
- Instructor Ancillary Support Materials.
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- Mark Harrison.
- Book Mark Harrison: "Tcl/ Tk Tools" ( 1997 ).
- Book Steven Holzner: "Web Development with Tcl/Tk 8.1" ( 1999 ).
- Book Wojciech Kocjan, Piotr Beltowski: "Tcl 8.5 Network Programming " ( 2010 ) #.
- “Get to know the key differences between free TclPro Debugger and paid ActiveState Tcl Dev Kit Debugger”.
- This book was suggested to me by experts on the “European Tcl/TK Users Meeting 2015”, it teaches a lot of useful tricks #.
- The accompanying website PACKT Publishing "Tcl 8.5 Network Programming".
- Book David Maggiano: "CGI Programming with Tcl, w. CD-ROM" ( 2000 ).
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- The free online HTML book Ashok P. Nadkarn "Tcl Programming for Windows" - “When Tcl is your hammer, even Windows is a nail”.
- Book Christopher Nelson: "Tcl/Tk Programmer's Reference " ( 1999 ).
- John K. Ousterhout.
- Book Ken Jones, John K. Ousterhout: "Tcl and the Tk Toolkit" ( 2009 ).
- “Definitive Introduction to Tcl/Tk-Now Fully Updated for Tcl/Tk 8.5 Tcl and the Tk Toolkit”.
- The book spends much pages in the “Part III Writing Tcl Applications in C” about development in C for Tcl.
- Book Chad Smith: "[Incr Tcl/Tk] from the Ground Up" ( 1999 ).
- Book Bert Wheeler: "Tcl/Tk 8.5 Programming Cookbook" ( 2011 ) #.
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- Book Brent B. Welch: "Praktisches Programmieren in Tcl und Tk" ( 1996 ).
- Book David H. Young: "The Visual Tcl Handbook" ( 1996 ).
- Book J. Adrian Zimmer, Atrian J. Zimmer: "TCL/TK for Programmers with Solved Exercises That Work with Unix & Windows" ( 1998 ).
- Book Jeffrey Hobbs, Brent B. Welch: "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" ( 2003 ) - This book was suggested to me by experts on the “European Tcl/TK Users Meeting 2015” #.
- The accompanying website Brent Welch "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk".
Books about Tkinter
- The Tkinter module ( “Tk interface” ) is the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit from Scriptics ( formerly developed by Sun Labs ).
- Fredrik Lundh.
- The free PDF and HTML book Fredrik Lundh "An Introduction to Tkinter" as of 1999 ( - 2012-11-10 ).
- The free HTML book Fredrik Lundh "An Introduction to Tkinter" as of 2005-11.
- The free PDF an online HTML book John W. Shipman "Tkinter 8.5 reference: a GUI for Python".
Resources
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- Eric Foster-Johnson - Tcl/Tk expert.
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- Cameron Laird "Index to Cameron Laird's personal Tcl pages" ( no “www.” ).
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- Rildo Pragana - Adventures in Linux Programming - Tcl applications for Linux.
- Archive.org "Self-Tcl.de - Tcl / Tk ( tickle )" ( - 2014-08-26 ).
- Tcl Developer Xchange - The #1 resource for Tcl/Tk.
- The current Tcler's Wiki - The #1 resource for Tcl/Tk.
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- Tcler's Wiki "Tcl'ers" - People.
- Tcler's Wiki "Tcl Style Guide" by Ray Johnson ##.
- tcl.tk "Tcl tutorial" for Tcl/Tk 8.5.
- The legacy Archive.org "Tcl'ers Wiki".
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- GUI: “Tkinter tutorial”, “Tcl/Tk tutorial”.
- Languages: “Tcl tutorial”.
Forums, Newsgroups
- Activestate.
- Activestate Community, Forum - Perl, Python & Tcl/Tk forums.
- Google.
- LinkedIn.
- SourceForge Mailing Lists "Visual Tcl" ( - 2009-11 ).
- SourceForge Mailing List "Visual Tcl", Message "Re: [vtcl-user] scrolled frame widget sample" - “There is a project in the demo folder called combo.tcl It demonstrates the three geometry managers”.1
- Tcler's Wiki - The #1 resource for Tcl/Tk.
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Appropriate OpenDirectory Directory Pages
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