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1The Tk Toolkit, Version 2.3
2
3by John Ousterhout
4University of California at Berkeley
5
61. Introduction
7---------------
8
9This directory contains the sources and documentation for Tk, which
10is an X11 toolkit that provides the Motif look and feel and is
11implemented using the Tcl command language.
12
13For an introduction to Tcl and Tk you may wish to read two papers:
14``Tcl: An Embeddable Command Language'', in the Proceedings of the
151990 Winter USENIX Conference, and ``An X11 Toolkit Based on the Tcl
16Language'', in the Proceedings of the 1991 Winter USENIX Conference.
17A 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".
19Both Tcl and Tk have evolved quite a bit since these papers were
20written so the papers are no longer complete or correct, but they will
21give you an introduction to the systems.
22
23The 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
31The enclosed code is known to run on most versions of SunOS and Ultrix
32in combination with the X11R4 and X11R5 window servers from MIT. It
33should also run with few or no changes on H-P and IBM workstations.
34
352. What's New In This Release
36-----------------------------
37
38Tk 2.2 is a major new release with a number of new features relative
39to the 2.1 release. Here is a summary of some of the most significant
40improvements:
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
76A good way to try out the new features is to run the "widget" demo;
77there are a number of new demonstrations to illustrate the new features.
78This release also contains many bug fixes. For a complete description
79of the changes in this release, see the file "changes". As far as I
80know there should not be any compatibility problems with respect to the
812.1 release.
82
833. Documentation
84----------------
85
86Manual entries for Tk are in the "doc" subdirectory as a set of files
87with ".man" extensions. Man pages whose names start with capital letters
88are for the procedures in Tk's C library. All other man pages document Tcl
89commands provided by Tk. To print any of the man pages, cd to the "doc"
90directory and invoke your favorite variant of troff using the normal
91-man macros, for example
92
93 ditroff -man <file>
94
95where <file> is the name of the man page you'd like to print. If you'd
96like a complete set of hardcopy manual entries, send me a message with
97your street address.
98
99Manual entries for Tcl are available in the subdirectory "tcl/doc";
100see the README file in the "tcl" directory for more information.
101
102Unfortunately, there doesn't yet exist a tutorial-style introduction
103to the facilities of Tcl and Tk. The papers give a general introduction,
104but it may be difficult to make the transition from the papers to the
105manual entries. If you are familiar with the Xt toolkit then the Tk
106facilities will probably be easy to pick up from the manual entries.
107If you have no experience with X or Xt, you may wish to wait another
1086-12 months to use Tk, until a more gentle introduction is available.
109
1104. Compiling Tk
111---------------
112
113Before attempting to compile Tk, personalize Makefile by following the
114directions at the beginning of the file. You should also configure
115Tcl by following the directions in the file "tcl/README". Then type
116"make" in the top-level directory (the one that contains this file).
117This will compile the Tk library and generate a simple windowing shell
118called "wish". It will also compile the Tcl library, which is in the
119"tcl" subdirectory.
120
1215. Installing Scripts
122---------------------
123
124Tk depends on a library of scripts that establish default behaviors
125for Tk widgets and do many other things. Tk normally expects the
126scripts to be in /usr/local/lib/tk. Create this directory and copy
127everything in the "library" subdirectory to it, including both files
128and 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
130from there to the library subdirectory or you can add a "-DTK_LIBRARY"
131switch to CFLAGS in Makefile; this will allow you to put the script
132library anywhere you like.
133
134I also recommend installing the wish binary in /usr/local. The demo
135scripts all work best when it is installed there.
136
1376. Getting Started
138------------------
139
140Once wish is compiled you can use it to play around with the Tk
141facilities. If you run wish with no arguments, it will open a small
142window on the screen and read Tcl commands from standard input.
143Or, you can play with some of the pre-canned scripts in the subdirectory
144scripts/demos. See the README file in the directory for a description
145of what's available. The file scripts/demos/widget is a script that
146you can use to invoke many individual demostrations of Tk's facilities.
147
148If you want to start typing Tcl/Tk commands to wish, I'd suggest
149starting with the "bind" command. Then learn about a widget-creation
150command like "button", and also learn about the "pack" and "place"
151commands for geometry management. Note: when you create a widget,
152it won't appear on the screen until you tell a geometry manager about
153it. The only geometry managers at present are the packer and the placer.
154If you don't already know Tcl, read the Tcl paper and the Tcl.man manual
155entry in the tcl subdirectory.
156
157The easiest way to learn about writing new widgets is probably to look
158at existing widget implementations. The demos directory contains an
159example of a trivial widget, which you might find useful as a starting
160point for writing new widgets. You might also take a look at main.c,
161the main program for wish, to see how to write a main program that uses
162the facilities of Tk and Tcl.
163
1647. Newsgroup
165------------
166
167There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the exchange
168of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications. Feel free to use
169this newsgroup both for general information questions and for bug reports.
170I read the newsgroup and will attempt to fix bugs and problems reported
171to it.
172
1738. Known Problems
174-----------------
175
176There are still many imperfections with the system. Below is a list
177of 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
190The file ToDo contains a list of various smaller bugs and mis-features
191that haven't been fixed yet.
192
1939. Feedback Wanted
194------------------
195
196I'm very interested in getting feedback from you both about bugs and about
197overall design issues. Send your comments to "ouster@sprite.berkeley.edu".
198I'll do my best to fix show-stopping bugs quickly, but most other things
199may not get fast turnaround, since I already have a zillion high-priority
200things to fix or implement. Before submitting requests for new features
201you may wish to check the file ToDo, which has a list of things I already
202know about and plan to implement soon.
203
2047. The Future
205-------------
206
207Tk is still young. I expect it to undergo substantial changes as I learn
208more about its strengths and weaknesses. Some of the changes will not be
209backward compatible: at this point I think it's more important to fix
210problems and improve Tk's structure than to maintain compatibility. At
211some point in the next year or so there will be a new release with major
212incompatibilities. My plan is to save up as many as possible of the
213incompatible changes that are needed and do them all at once.
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