In [comp.lang.tcl], I asked: "Does anyone here have any thoughts or pointers into the [Wiki], or to papers that might help us port our current Tcl-[Tk] [GUI]s to a browser without re-coding in [Java]?"
I received the following suggestions:
* [Manfred Rosenberger] ever tried [Woof!]
* [Marty Backe] suggested [tcljava] and [swank], "particularly the latter." [CL] observes that Swank is for use with the [Jacl] part of [Tcljava].
* [Tom Poindexter] suggested: "You might try [WeirdX], it's an X11 server written in Java, and runs as a browser applet. I've used this in the past to deliver Tcl/Tk applications for internal users. It's suitable for running on fast, secure networks."
* Tom also suggests: "[Proxy Tk] would also be an idea, but to my knowledge, it never made it into public consumption". [Bryan Oakley] also offered the same suggestion, continuing: "The short summary is, you write tk on the server which drives a thin client that translates the tk commands into java widgets in the client. The software isn't available, but it looks like a fairly straight-forward thing to reinvent. Unless your guis are trivial, it may take less effort to reinvent proxytk than it would be to recode all of the GUIs in Java."
* Several folks suggested [VNC]. As of 2006, CL is doing a lot of work with VNC-in-a-browser; expect this to become public in late September.
* [Donal Fellows] suggested: "If you end up having to do Java GUIs, start by porting the Tk geometry managers to Java as the standard ones are not really very good (GridBagLayout sucks a lot more than you might think at first. Trust me.) That'll save you much frustration."
* [Roy Terry] suggested: "You can run Tcl/Tk as an [activeX] object using [TclControl]. I believe, but haven't done the work, that you could also package the tclcontrol along with the needed Tcl/Tk dlls, etc. into a CAB file and have the whole thing download seamlessly on Windows." A paper [http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~fuzz/TclControl/] provides details.
* CL also believes that good engineering judgment in such a matter depends on details. Is the GUI just a buttons-and-entry form-oriented office-automation sort of thing, or does it involve a lot of [canvas] sophistication? What network characteristics can be assumed? What security and licensing models are involved?
* [Roy Keene] suggested: It should be possible to emulate the Tk functionality in Tcl, and also provide an HTML rendering engine for the psuedo-Tk widgets in HTML. An incomplete example [http://www.rkeene.org/viewer/projects/tkweb/tkweb.tcl.htm] [http://www.rkeene.org/projects/tkweb/] is available for examination. A [Tkweb] screenshot ( http://www.rkeene.org/projects/tkweb/tkweb-test1-2.png ) is also available. This method is also discussed by Wilfred J. Hansen [http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2004/Tcl2003papers/rendering.doc] .
* [Æjaks] Although not directly compatible with Tk, Æjaks provides a very similar programming model.
* By 2010, [HTML5] has caught up sufficiently to offer '''canvas''', [SVG], and other interesting advances that duplicate parts of Tk's style.
Eventually this goes in the same direction: [Matthias Hoffmann - Thoughts And Ideas]|[Generating HTML with commands styled after Tk]??
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[Googie] - 2011-05-28 - I was playing a little with [ajax] lately (using [jquery]) and I believe Tk can be implemented (more or less accurately) using tools like [jquery] or [dojo] or something similar for frontend, then some object orientation package on Tcl side ([TclOO] most probably) + json::write from [Tcllib]. What do you guys think?
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[Martin Cleaver] - 2011-12-16 - believes that transpiling tcltk into coffeescript and html5 would be a worthy goal.
* https://twitter.com/#!/mrjcleaver/status/144383825890377728
* https://twitter.com/#!/markroseman/status/144418651011948545
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'''[FireTcl] - 2015-08-18 23:53:41'''
I developed FireTcl. It's a framework that embeds Tcl into Firefox.
It uses behind the scenes the XPCOM component js-ctypes, and coroutines for emulating interactivity with the browser (execute javascript, manipulate the DOM,...)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/firetcl/
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[Jeff Smith] = 2017-12-18: Check out [CloudTk] for viewing Tk applications (unmodified) in a modern web browser.
[chw] 2019-02-17: Check out the jsmpeg SDL video driver with undroidwish, see https://www.androwish.org/index.html/wiki?name=jsmpeg+SDL+Video+Driver for details.
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