7 ms·

Visual Tcl

133 points by galfarragem 6y ago

sigzero 6y ago
There's a Tcl blast from the past.
peteretep 6y ago
> Exports Tclets which run in Netscape/MSIE. You must have the Tcl Plugin to see the Tclets. Not sure the Tcl Plugin would still run anywhere, which is a shame
- Aldipower 6y ago
  I think Chrome dropped support recently too..
  - flohofwoe 6y ago
    Would be a nice weekend hack to create a Tclet "plugin" for WASM. The Tcl interpreter itself is extremely easy to port to exotic platforms, only problem might be APIs that wrap underlying operating system APIs, those would need to be emulated on top of browser APIs.
- skissane 6y ago
  I assume the plugin is just running Tcl/Tk inside a browser window. I wonder how hard it would be to recreate the same idea using Emscripten drawing to a HTML canvas? People have gotten Tcl to work on Emscripten [0]. I think the big problem is the Tk part. Tk has X11, Win32 and macOS backends, but emscripten supports SDL, for which there is no Tk backend. [0] https://github.com/aidanhs/emtcl https://github.com/aidanhs/emtcl
  - swiley 6y ago
    There is an SDL backend for Tk but it's not part of the normal distribution: http://androwish.org/home/home http://androwish.org/home/home
  - blacksqr 6y ago
    The Projected Tk project aims to recreate Tk with a pluggable backend structure, with a web browser backend one goal. https://chiselapp.com/user/gwlester/repository/PTK/home https://chiselapp.com/user/gwlester/repository/PTK/home
bsdooby 6y ago
Native Client (NaCl) comes to mind.
pjmlp 6y ago
Back in the day Active State also had similar tooling support on their Tcl IDE. https://www.activestate.com/products/tcl/ https://www.activestate.com/products/tcl/
- Aldipower 6y ago
  The products from Active State were my choice of love before Sublime Text got popular. They had a very good workflow in my opinion. Only downside was the performance of the IDE, but still way better then Ecplise.
tluyben2 6y ago
We used this back in the day to make a touchscreen PoS application. It was great as you can switch from running state to dev state without any friction. We quickly went from nothing to production because of visualtcl.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
qwantim1 6y ago
I once used Tcl/Tk and am glad to see it’s still out there. I’ve recently thought of using it again for fun. I’m constantly amazed, but shouldn’t be, at how things like Tcl/Tk, that are used by various businesses to create applications, don’t take off into the mainstream. I think about all of the effort today on the web using JavaScript. That’s using a language that could hardly do anything 25 years ago. But it wasn’t OS-specific, so it beat its competitor, VBScript, and later beat Applets and now Flash. I think the momentum that inspired V8 and development of great sandboxes, etc. was that JavaScript early on was fun for those that were creating their own webpages. Tcl/Tk wasn’t fun, and neither were Java’s AWT nor Swing. So, maybe that’s why they didn’t stay around. However, JS isn’t that fun for me either, these days. Constantly learning to do it “correctly” takes a lot of effort.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Until Node (when it was more than 10 years old), JS essentially did not exist outside the web. And other languages essentially didn’t exist inside the web. So JS’s success is the web’s success, other explanations are not helpful or needed. I wouldn’t characterize JS as fun either, especially not in comparison to Python which predates it.
  - bachmeier 6y ago
    > And other languages essentially didn’t exist inside the web. Having trouble following your argument. What were people doing with PHP if not "inside the web"?
    - Kototama 6y ago
      The argument is that since Javascript was the only programming language running in the browser, it was bound to be successful with the explosion of the web ; other arguments trying to justify why it succeed are not relevant.
  - andylynch 6y ago
    Funny how that came back into vogue. Netscape web server had a JS runtime way back then. Node is way nicer to use though. I also remember around the same time it was possible to run TCL in browser, like Java applets.
badsectoracula 6y ago
I've only played briefly with it some years ago on a Linux installation but one thing that i found neat was that unlike something Visual Basic or Delphi (which were clear inspirations - i think this screenshot[0] with the entire UI makes it a bit more obvious than the windows in the linked site) is that it is a "live" environment (pretty much like tclsh and wish) you are working with (kinda like a Smalltalk, though probably not to the same extent). (though FWIW classic VB is a sort of in-between because you are editing the actual forms and state you'd see running - which is most likely why you can't edit a form while the program is running and the IDE even "hides" them - but there is an intentional distinction between "running" and "editing") [0] https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/vtcl/screenshots/49571.jpg https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/vtcl/screenshots/49571.jpg
- dmux 6y ago
  >kinda like a Smalltalk This may be of interest if you find the idea of a live Tcl environment interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852484
- mschaef 6y ago
  > FWIW classic VB is a sort of in-between because you are editing the actual forms and state you'd see running VB could be a little weird in that respect. This screenshot of 1.0 has a clue about why: https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/40c3942c-c281-2230-11c3-a4e284a2c3a5 https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/40c3942c-c281-2230-11c3-a4... The timer control in the toolbar (left column, second from the bottom) is an example of a control you could drag over into the 'form editor', give a location, but was totally invisible at runtime. All it did was provide a hook for timer events. This pattern turned into something common, at least in early VB. The extension mechanism for the language was defined in terms of VBX custom controls - which were intended to be visual controls that showed up on screen. The model worked well as long as that assumption held true, but VBX was also turned into an ad hoc mechanism for everything else. The net of this was that you often had a form editor showing a bunch of totally-non-graphical VBX controls that would do things like send mail, interact with a PBX, whatever else. Rolling back from this mess was a bit part of the impetus for the way OLE/COM 2.0 was designed, specifically OCX controls and IDispatch.
wiso 6y ago
I remember using https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tkBuilder https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tkBuilder long time ago.
lizknope 6y ago
A lot of EDA (Electronic Design Automation CAD tools for the semiconductor industry) tools use Tcl as the built in scripting language. Because of that many companies have built their CAD flows around Tcl so that it integrates with the tools from Cadence and Synopsys.
GnarfGnarf 6y ago
I'm trying to compile SQLite from source, which requires Tcl. I'm getting many errors in what should be a "vanilla", hassle-free, off-the-shelf process. The 32-bit Tcl test suite fails with cryptic unresolved externals, whereas the 64-bit build only fails one test.
- tyingq 6y ago
  As far as I know, it's not a hard dependency. I believe if you just build from the autoconf download after deleting the tclsqlite.c file it works fine.
elviejo 6y ago
Where can I learn Tk/Tcl today?
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  A couple of good resources: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tcl-tk/index.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tcl-tk/index.htm https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+Tutorial+Lesson+0 https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+Tutorial+Lesson+0
- cartoonfoxes 6y ago
  "The TCL Programming Language" is a recent (2017) book, paired with the language docs at https://www.tcl.tk/doc/ https://www.tcl.tk/doc/. The language itself is remarkably simple.
publicola1990 6y ago
How does using tcl and this compare with using Pascal and Lazarus for GUIs?
zubairq 6y ago
Very nice. As the creator of visual JavaScript I am glad to see something even better in the TCL world

133 points by galfarragem 6y ago

There's a Tcl blast from the past.

> Exports Tclets which run in Netscape/MSIE. You must have the Tcl Plugin to see the Tclets. Not sure the Tcl Plugin would still run anywhere, which is a shame

Aldipower 6y ago
I think Chrome dropped support recently too..
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  Would be a nice weekend hack to create a Tclet "plugin" for WASM. The Tcl interpreter itself is extremely easy to port to exotic platforms, only problem might be APIs that wrap underlying operating system APIs, those would need to be emulated on top of browser APIs.
skissane 6y ago
I assume the plugin is just running Tcl/Tk inside a browser window. I wonder how hard it would be to recreate the same idea using Emscripten drawing to a HTML canvas? People have gotten Tcl to work on Emscripten [0]. I think the big problem is the Tk part. Tk has X11, Win32 and macOS backends, but emscripten supports SDL, for which there is no Tk backend. [0] https://github.com/aidanhs/emtcl https://github.com/aidanhs/emtcl
- swiley 6y ago
  There is an SDL backend for Tk but it's not part of the normal distribution: http://androwish.org/home/home http://androwish.org/home/home
- blacksqr 6y ago
  The Projected Tk project aims to recreate Tk with a pluggable backend structure, with a web browser backend one goal. https://chiselapp.com/user/gwlester/repository/PTK/home https://chiselapp.com/user/gwlester/repository/PTK/home

bsdooby 6y ago

Native Client (NaCl) comes to mind.

pjmlp 6y ago

Back in the day Active State also had similar tooling support on their Tcl IDE. https://www.activestate.com/products/tcl/ https://www.activestate.com/products/tcl/

Aldipower 6y ago
The products from Active State were my choice of love before Sublime Text got popular. They had a very good workflow in my opinion. Only downside was the performance of the IDE, but still way better then Ecplise.

tluyben2 6y ago

We used this back in the day to make a touchscreen PoS application. It was great as you can switch from running state to dev state without any friction. We quickly went from nothing to production because of visualtcl.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

qwantim1 6y ago

I once used Tcl/Tk and am glad to see it’s still out there. I’ve recently thought of using it again for fun. I’m constantly amazed, but shouldn’t be, at how things like Tcl/Tk, that are used by various businesses to create applications, don’t take off into the mainstream. I think about all of the effort today on the web using JavaScript. That’s using a language that could hardly do anything 25 years ago. But it wasn’t OS-specific, so it beat its competitor, VBScript, and later beat Applets and now Flash. I think the momentum that inspired V8 and development of great sandboxes, etc. was that JavaScript early on was fun for those that were creating their own webpages. Tcl/Tk wasn’t fun, and neither were Java’s AWT nor Swing. So, maybe that’s why they didn’t stay around. However, JS isn’t that fun for me either, these days. Constantly learning to do it “correctly” takes a lot of effort.

beagle3 6y ago
Until Node (when it was more than 10 years old), JS essentially did not exist outside the web. And other languages essentially didn’t exist inside the web. So JS’s success is the web’s success, other explanations are not helpful or needed. I wouldn’t characterize JS as fun either, especially not in comparison to Python which predates it.
- bachmeier 6y ago
  > And other languages essentially didn’t exist inside the web. Having trouble following your argument. What were people doing with PHP if not "inside the web"?
  - Kototama 6y ago
    The argument is that since Javascript was the only programming language running in the browser, it was bound to be successful with the explosion of the web ; other arguments trying to justify why it succeed are not relevant.
- andylynch 6y ago
  Funny how that came back into vogue. Netscape web server had a JS runtime way back then. Node is way nicer to use though. I also remember around the same time it was possible to run TCL in browser, like Java applets.

badsectoracula 6y ago

I've only played briefly with it some years ago on a Linux installation but one thing that i found neat was that unlike something Visual Basic or Delphi (which were clear inspirations - i think this screenshot[0] with the entire UI makes it a bit more obvious than the windows in the linked site) is that it is a "live" environment (pretty much like tclsh and wish) you are working with (kinda like a Smalltalk, though probably not to the same extent). (though FWIW classic VB is a sort of in-between because you are editing the actual forms and state you'd see running - which is most likely why you can't edit a form while the program is running and the IDE even "hides" them - but there is an intentional distinction between "running" and "editing") [0] https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/vtcl/screenshots/49571.jpg https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/vtcl/screenshots/49571.jpg

dmux 6y ago
>kinda like a Smalltalk This may be of interest if you find the idea of a live Tcl environment interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852484
mschaef 6y ago
> FWIW classic VB is a sort of in-between because you are editing the actual forms and state you'd see running VB could be a little weird in that respect. This screenshot of 1.0 has a clue about why: https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/40c3942c-c281-2230-11c3-a4e284a2c3a5 https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/40c3942c-c281-2230-11c3-a4... The timer control in the toolbar (left column, second from the bottom) is an example of a control you could drag over into the 'form editor', give a location, but was totally invisible at runtime. All it did was provide a hook for timer events. This pattern turned into something common, at least in early VB. The extension mechanism for the language was defined in terms of VBX custom controls - which were intended to be visual controls that showed up on screen. The model worked well as long as that assumption held true, but VBX was also turned into an ad hoc mechanism for everything else. The net of this was that you often had a form editor showing a bunch of totally-non-graphical VBX controls that would do things like send mail, interact with a PBX, whatever else. Rolling back from this mess was a bit part of the impetus for the way OLE/COM 2.0 was designed, specifically OCX controls and IDispatch.

wiso 6y ago

I remember using https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tkBuilder https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tkBuilder long time ago.

lizknope 6y ago

A lot of EDA (Electronic Design Automation CAD tools for the semiconductor industry) tools use Tcl as the built in scripting language. Because of that many companies have built their CAD flows around Tcl so that it integrates with the tools from Cadence and Synopsys.

GnarfGnarf 6y ago

I'm trying to compile SQLite from source, which requires Tcl. I'm getting many errors in what should be a "vanilla", hassle-free, off-the-shelf process. The 32-bit Tcl test suite fails with cryptic unresolved externals, whereas the 64-bit build only fails one test.

tyingq 6y ago
As far as I know, it's not a hard dependency. I believe if you just build from the autoconf download after deleting the tclsqlite.c file it works fine.

elviejo 6y ago

Where can I learn Tk/Tcl today?

doublerabbit 6y ago
A couple of good resources: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tcl-tk/index.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tcl-tk/index.htm https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+Tutorial+Lesson+0 https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+Tutorial+Lesson+0
cartoonfoxes 6y ago
"The TCL Programming Language" is a recent (2017) book, paired with the language docs at https://www.tcl.tk/doc/ https://www.tcl.tk/doc/. The language itself is remarkably simple.

publicola1990 6y ago

How does using tcl and this compare with using Pascal and Lazarus for GUIs?

zubairq 6y ago

Very nice. As the creator of visual JavaScript I am glad to see something even better in the TCL world