Alternative GUI toolkits

Purpose: to document and review attempts to provide GUI toolkits for Tcl that are based on a library other than Tk's graphical library.

Please add to this list, or correct the info. If links or emails are stale and you have updated email addresses, etc. please add.


With the arrival of Tile, Tcl apps can draw native Windows XP/OS X widgets. Other GUI libraries have this ability:

  • Qt
  • WXWidgets

While those (although famous) are not:

  • GTK
  • Fltk

 Where: ftp://csc.canberra.edu.au/pub/motif/tclMotif/tclMotif.tar.z
        ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/devel_tools/tclMotif.1.4.tar.Z
        ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-7.6/devel/tclMotif.1.4.tar.gz
 Description: A Tcl shell (moat) which uses Motif widgets rather than
        Tk widgets.  Requires Tcl 7.3 and Motif 1.2.1.
        Some Motif 2.0 support is present, but it is based on a beta
        release of Motif 2.0.
        A mailing list is available on
        mailto:[email protected] ; send a
        "subscribe tclMotif your_name"
        line to join.
 Updated: 09/2002
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Jan Newmarch)
 Where: ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/WavesWorld/WW1.0B2Complete.tar
        ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/WavesWorld/WW1.0B2SrcOnly.tar
 Description: This is a strictly NeXTSTEP interface.  One of the two palettes
        included in this release is WWTCLWidgets one take on how to integrate
        Tcl into the NeXTSTEP development environment.
        The other palette makes use of the Tcl widget palette.
        The other WavesWorld palettes, on
        ftp://media.mit.edu/pub/WavesWorld/,
        integrate Tcl into IB, complete with a suite of UI objects,
        and a 3D modeling language called eve, which is basically Tcl with a
        full RenderMan binding.  The WWTCLWidgetsPalette includes a WWTCLInterp,
        which is an objective-C wrapper around a Tcl interp.
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Michael B. Johnson)
 Where: From the contact
 Description: A Tcl 7.x interface to the XVT GUI toolbox.  It is not a
        complete encapsulation of XVT, though it may be close enough to
        be useful.  It is freely distributable software, even though
        XVT is not.  It was developed with the Macintosh's MPW 3.2+ and SCO
        Motif on XVT v3.02.  It has not been ported to Windows.  PortBox
        requires an ANSI C compiler.  This is *NOT* a version of Tk for
        the Macintosh or Windows.
 Updated:
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Cecil Coupe)
 Where: ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/rom/euuc-freeware/MISCELLA/TCL/TCLMOTIF.Z
 Description: Ultrix port of Tcl 6 with Motif extension.
 Updated:
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Doug Barlow, DECwest NSM/AD)
 Where: From the contact
 Description: Changes to tclMotif 1.2 to integrate the XbaeMatrixWidget
        (a freely distributable Motif efficient, editable matrix widget) into
        tclMotif.
 Updated:
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Sriram Srinivasan)
 Where: http://www.bgi-sa.com/
 Description: Native MS-Windows GUI interface, for Windows 95/NT.
        Requires Tcl 8.0 or ActiveTcl.  Replaces Tk.
        Create modeless dialog boxes, native window controls,
        extended window controls, user drawn window controls and bitmapped
        buttons with [tooltips] in dll form.  A sample GUI editor written
        in Tcl is provided.  A new version is almost finished with
        full MDI support (multi menu), Popup Menu, Growable and dockable
        dialog boxes, Tooltips. Licence is free of charge,
        doc is in the form of a Winhelp file,
        Source available on request.
 Updated: 12/1998
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (N. Frankinet)
 Where: http://tcl-gtk.sourceforge.net/
 Description: A number of GTk widgets have been bound to Tcl 8.2,
        based on GTk 1.2.  Currently at pre-alpha version 0.03.
 Updated: 07/1999
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Mark S. Patton)
 Where: http://www.multimania.com/awaken
 Description: The wx is a new GUI extension to Tcl, based on wxWindows and
        wxGTK.  its intention is to provide a developer with an extension
        able to provide a native look and feel, contemporary looking
        programming constructs, AND still be able to operate within a normal
        Tcl and Tk application!  The extension is considered beta at this
        time, but should exhibit the possibilities to the developer.
 Updated: 09/2000
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Olivier Paquay)

RLH 2006-10-23: wxTcl is no longer being developed and hasn't been for a while. Pity that.

 Where: http://www.bluem.net/en/mac/pashua/
 Description: Pashua is a tool for creating simple, but native Aqua GUIs
        for Perl, PHP, shell scripts or AppleScript. "Simple" means:
        It's limited to dialog windows, and the number of different GUI
        widgets available is currently limited to text input fields,
        checkboxes, radiobuttons, popup menus, combo boxes, texts,
        cancel and default buttons.
 Updated: 01/2014
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Carsten Bluem)

See also