This page considers what software should be put in front of newcomers to the language.
Differs for different platforms - as well as for different interests.
- C compiler (and CriTcl?) - needed to build non-script extensions
- GNU autoconf (only needed if a) you are building your own TEA compliant extensions or b) you need to generate the configure script from a CVS repository snapshot, I think)
- Some sort of text editor (See Tcl Editors)
- Tcl - the place to learn hello, world
- Tcl Tutor - a good tutorial for intro to Tcl
- Tk - the place to learn it graphically
- Tkcon - a recommended user interface
- Tcllib - a good collection of useful Tcl code
- Tclapps - some example tcl scripts - the most important of which is tkchat!
- TclX - a lot of useful Unix-like extras
- Expect - very useful to automate command line apps, also some nice debugging tools
- Img - very useful to display various image types
- Snack - sound generation
- Some sort of database Oratcl, etc.
- TclPro for visual debugger, static checker, binary wrapper. Tcl Dev Kit is based upon that.
- Frink is another static checker
- tclvfs is in my opinion going to be a must have extension, for doing useful new things simply
- Thread is an extension to make simple threads available to the Tcl programmer
- Tcldom/Tclxml,and the rest of the family if you are going to be doing xml work.
- incr Tcl or one of the other object oriented extensions if you are going to be writing code of much complexity or size
- BLT, Tix, or one of the other megawidget/addon widget extensions
- The sample Tcl extension to show you how to organize a TEA compliant extension
- RamDebugger A graphical debugger for Tcl/Tk
Many/most of these are in ActiveTcl - however, not all platforms are supported by ActiveState.
[ ActiveTcl, TclKit, Kitten, SmallTcl, ...]
- C compiler
- GNU autoconf (???)
- Some sort of text editor
- Tcl - the place to learn hello, world
- Tcl Tutor - a good tutorial for intro to Tcl
- Tk - the place to learn it graphically
- Tkcon - a good interface
- Tcllib - a good collection of useful Tcl code
- QuickTimeTcl - interface to QuickTime
See also Apple Macintosh and Tcl/Tk, as well as Compiling Tcl on a Mac and Macintosh specific Tcl commands.
See also Microsoft Windows and Tk, Building Tcl DLL's for Windows, Windows/CE, Microsoft Windows and Tcl, Windows specific Tcl commands, Windows Registry Browser, etc.ng
JCW - a plea: please also consider making some zlib implementation interface "standard" - its absence is preventing several valuable uses (mounting a ZIP with TclVFS, for example)
LV Sounds like a need for a TIP, doesn't it? The problem is that we either have to include the zlib library code in the Tcl distribution, or we have to point people to where to get it and work out the difficulties of building it on each platform that supports Tcl.
DGP The value of zlib seems overstated to me too. It doesn't really make anything new possible. It just makes some disk files smaller. Big whoop.
Vince But having a standard interface from Tcl-zlib with the vfs does make new things possible. It means Tcl could transparently use the contents of .zip/.jar files. That's what JCW is after... I agree with LV that it needs a TIP and it is really to become the standard, we do need to include it with Tcl. This is a drawback.