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1.1 root 1: The Tk Toolkit, Version 2.3
2:
3: by John Ousterhout
4: University of California at Berkeley
5:
6: 1. Introduction
7: ---------------
8:
9: This directory contains the sources and documentation for Tk, which
10: is an X11 toolkit that provides the Motif look and feel and is
11: implemented using the Tcl command language.
12:
13: For an introduction to Tcl and Tk you may wish to read two papers:
14: ``Tcl: An Embeddable Command Language'', in the Proceedings of the
15: 1990 Winter USENIX Conference, and ``An X11 Toolkit Based on the Tcl
16: Language'', in the Proceedings of the 1991 Winter USENIX Conference.
17: A copy of the first paper is present in Postscript form in the file
18: "tcl/usenix.ps"; Postscript for the second paper is in "doc/usenix.ps".
19: Both Tcl and Tk have evolved quite a bit since these papers were
20: written so the papers are no longer complete or correct, but they will
21: give you an introduction to the systems.
22:
23: The following things are present in this directory and its subdirectories:
24:
25: 1. Tk, a toolkit for X11 windowing applications.
26: 2. Tcl, an embeddable command language on which Tk is based.
27: 3. Wish, a simple windowing shell that uses Tk and Tcl.
28: 4. A collection of demonstration scripts to illustrate the use
29: of various features of Tk.
30:
31: The enclosed code is known to run on most versions of SunOS and Ultrix
32: in combination with the X11R4 and X11R5 window servers from MIT. It
33: should also run with few or no changes on H-P and IBM workstations.
34:
35: 2. What's New In This Release
36: -----------------------------
37:
38: Tk 2.2 is a major new release with a number of new features relative
39: to the 2.1 release. Here is a summary of some of the most significant
40: improvements:
41:
42: - There is now a text widget. It will display multiple lines of text
43: and allows the text to be edited (but the set of bindings for
44: editing isn't very rich yet). It also includes a tagging mechanism
45: that allows you to change the fonts, colors, etc. on a character-
46: by-character basis, and you can associate bindings with tags to
47: implement hypertext-like features. It handles large texts
48: efficiently.
49:
50: - Canvases have been improved in many ways, including new item types
51: (arcs, bitmaps, and subwindows), Bezier spline support for lines
52: and polygons, "coords" and "bbox" widget commands, and many other
53: improvements and bug fixes.
54:
55: - There is a new "grab" command that can be used to create modal dialog
56: boxes.
57:
58: - There is a new "tkwait" command for waiting for particular events to
59: occur (such as modal dialog box to complete its task).
60:
61: - The menu bindings have been completely reworked to have better Motif
62: compliance, such as keyboard traversal.
63:
64: - Individual menu entries can now have their own colors and fonts.
65:
66: - Most widgets (e.g. buttons, entries, text) now have a "-state" option
67: that can be set to "disabled" to make the widget insensitive.
68:
69: - A new "-disabledForeground" option allows you to request that disabled
70: buttons and menu entries be displayed in a dimmer color rather than with
71: a stippled version of the original color.
72:
73: - Entries and messages can now be tied to a variable so that either is
74: updated if the other changes.
75:
76: A good way to try out the new features is to run the "widget" demo;
77: there are a number of new demonstrations to illustrate the new features.
78: This release also contains many bug fixes. For a complete description
79: of the changes in this release, see the file "changes". As far as I
80: know there should not be any compatibility problems with respect to the
81: 2.1 release.
82:
83: 3. Documentation
84: ----------------
85:
86: Manual entries for Tk are in the "doc" subdirectory as a set of files
87: with ".man" extensions. Man pages whose names start with capital letters
88: are for the procedures in Tk's C library. All other man pages document Tcl
89: commands provided by Tk. To print any of the man pages, cd to the "doc"
90: directory and invoke your favorite variant of troff using the normal
91: -man macros, for example
92:
93: ditroff -man <file>
94:
95: where <file> is the name of the man page you'd like to print. If you'd
96: like a complete set of hardcopy manual entries, send me a message with
97: your street address.
98:
99: Manual entries for Tcl are available in the subdirectory "tcl/doc";
100: see the README file in the "tcl" directory for more information.
101:
102: Unfortunately, there doesn't yet exist a tutorial-style introduction
103: to the facilities of Tcl and Tk. The papers give a general introduction,
104: but it may be difficult to make the transition from the papers to the
105: manual entries. If you are familiar with the Xt toolkit then the Tk
106: facilities will probably be easy to pick up from the manual entries.
107: If you have no experience with X or Xt, you may wish to wait another
108: 6-12 months to use Tk, until a more gentle introduction is available.
109:
110: 4. Compiling Tk
111: ---------------
112:
113: Before attempting to compile Tk, personalize Makefile by following the
114: directions at the beginning of the file. You should also configure
115: Tcl by following the directions in the file "tcl/README". Then type
116: "make" in the top-level directory (the one that contains this file).
117: This will compile the Tk library and generate a simple windowing shell
118: called "wish". It will also compile the Tcl library, which is in the
119: "tcl" subdirectory.
120:
121: 5. Installing Scripts
122: ---------------------
123:
124: Tk depends on a library of scripts that establish default behaviors
125: for Tk widgets and do many other things. Tk normally expects the
126: scripts to be in /usr/local/lib/tk. Create this directory and copy
127: everything in the "library" subdirectory to it, including both files
128: and subdirectories. Or, if you don't want to create a subdirectory of
129: /usr/local/lib (or if you can't), you can either make a symbolic link
130: from there to the library subdirectory or you can add a "-DTK_LIBRARY"
131: switch to CFLAGS in Makefile; this will allow you to put the script
132: library anywhere you like.
133:
134: I also recommend installing the wish binary in /usr/local. The demo
135: scripts all work best when it is installed there.
136:
137: 6. Getting Started
138: ------------------
139:
140: Once wish is compiled you can use it to play around with the Tk
141: facilities. If you run wish with no arguments, it will open a small
142: window on the screen and read Tcl commands from standard input.
143: Or, you can play with some of the pre-canned scripts in the subdirectory
144: scripts/demos. See the README file in the directory for a description
145: of what's available. The file scripts/demos/widget is a script that
146: you can use to invoke many individual demostrations of Tk's facilities.
147:
148: If you want to start typing Tcl/Tk commands to wish, I'd suggest
149: starting with the "bind" command. Then learn about a widget-creation
150: command like "button", and also learn about the "pack" and "place"
151: commands for geometry management. Note: when you create a widget,
152: it won't appear on the screen until you tell a geometry manager about
153: it. The only geometry managers at present are the packer and the placer.
154: If you don't already know Tcl, read the Tcl paper and the Tcl.man manual
155: entry in the tcl subdirectory.
156:
157: The easiest way to learn about writing new widgets is probably to look
158: at existing widget implementations. The demos directory contains an
159: example of a trivial widget, which you might find useful as a starting
160: point for writing new widgets. You might also take a look at main.c,
161: the main program for wish, to see how to write a main program that uses
162: the facilities of Tk and Tcl.
163:
164: 7. Newsgroup
165: ------------
166:
167: There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the exchange
168: of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications. Feel free to use
169: this newsgroup both for general information questions and for bug reports.
170: I read the newsgroup and will attempt to fix bugs and problems reported
171: to it.
172:
173: 8. Known Problems
174: -----------------
175:
176: There are still many imperfections with the system. Below is a list
177: of some of the more serious omissions and bugs:
178:
179: 1. The widgets don't look very good on monochrome displays right now,
180: because I haven't had a chance to figure out how to do the 3-D
181: effects right without color. The widgets should look pretty good in
182: color. The widgets aren't fully Motif-compliant yet. In particular,
183: there is no keyboard navigation yet. The widgets will eventually
184: become fully Motif-compatible (assuming I can figure out how Motif
185: widgets are supposed to look and feel).
186:
187: 2. Tk doesn't work very well with virtual-root window managers such
188: as tvtwm.
189:
190: The file ToDo contains a list of various smaller bugs and mis-features
191: that haven't been fixed yet.
192:
193: 9. Feedback Wanted
194: ------------------
195:
196: I'm very interested in getting feedback from you both about bugs and about
197: overall design issues. Send your comments to "[email protected]".
198: I'll do my best to fix show-stopping bugs quickly, but most other things
199: may not get fast turnaround, since I already have a zillion high-priority
200: things to fix or implement. Before submitting requests for new features
201: you may wish to check the file ToDo, which has a list of things I already
202: know about and plan to implement soon.
203:
204: 7. The Future
205: -------------
206:
207: Tk is still young. I expect it to undergo substantial changes as I learn
208: more about its strengths and weaknesses. Some of the changes will not be
209: backward compatible: at this point I think it's more important to fix
210: problems and improve Tk's structure than to maintain compatibility. At
211: some point in the next year or so there will be a new release with major
212: incompatibilities. My plan is to save up as many as possible of the
213: incompatible changes that are needed and do them all at once.
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