Tcl Articles

The Wiki menu Articles links to recent articles and blogs.

The index below points to just some of the older online articles about Tcl, Tk, and various extensions. Most of these articles really talk about Tcl, instead of just mentioning it along with other scripting languages.

LV I've taken a first whack at organizing this page by article year where possible. If you would like to move some items from the unorganized section to the appropriate year, please feel free to do so. Also feel free to add new articles...

2011

Objects in Tcl ,Koen Van Damme ,2011

Data file formats for Tcl scripts ,Koen Van Damme ,2011

Turn your scripting language into a code generator ,Koen Van Damme ,2011

2009

Tk is my favorite GUI toolkit ,Cameron Laird ,ITWorld ,2001-11-11

Take advantage of Tk ,Cameron Laird ,ITWorld ,2009-11-12

Using Tcl to create a virtual component in Verilog ,embedded.com ,2009-10-02

A brief introduction to the TCL Scripting Language , embedded.com ,2009-10-02

Good-looking Tk ,Cameron Laird ,ITWorld ,2009-11-15

2008

Hv3 and the art of minimalist web-browsing ,LWN.net ,2008-12-17

Tcl Turns 20 ,SD Times ,2008-20-04

2007

Hot skills: become a speedy software developer with Tcl ,Computerweekly.com ,2007-11-02

a new text file browser to replace less. (about trowser) ,Linux.com ,2007-10-15

Microsoft makes AJAX technology available (includes a references to Æjaks) ,Infoworld ,2007-01-23

2006

Tcl your desktop ,how to enhance one's desktop with tiny yet surprisingly useful applets ,Bill Zimmerly ,IBM developerWorks ,2006-06-10

OSnews discussion thread about Bill Zimmerly's article

Tcl time ,Mike Saunders ,Linux Format ,Issue 87 ,2006-12

Ruby vs Tcl, part 1 ,David Welton ,2006-04-14

Ruby vs Tcl, round 2 ,David Welton ,2006-04-12

2005

Make it right using Tcl ,Software testing with Tcl for Apache Rivet David Welton, Free Software Magazine ,2005-05

Build a Simple 3D Pipeline in Tcl, Michael Norton, 2005-08-12

Scripting a Binary Tree Using Tcl ,Michael J. Norton ,2005-01-28 (also at rootprompt.org and [L1 ])

2004

Network Tool Development with hping3 ,Frederico Biancuzzi ,2004-10-07

The Tk Text Widget ,Derek Fountain ,Linux Journal ,2004-01-15

The Tk Canvas Widget ,Derek Fountain ,Linux Journal ,2004-02-10

Asterisk Open-Source PBX System ,Brett Schwarz ,Linux Hournal ,2004-02-01

  • shows off Tcl as an an Asterisk [L2 ] AGI scripting language and softphone [L3 ]:

2003

XP Testing Without XP: Taking Advantage of Agile Testing Practices ,Lisa Crispin ,Methods & Tools ,Summer 2003

  • Lisa mentions that most of the software her team develops is in Tcl.
  • Unfortunately, no real Tcl code or tools are specifically mentioned here.

Tcl Core Team Interview ,David Welton ,OSnews ,2003-03-10

  • an interview with several TCT members
  • Notice that at the bottom of the page is a place for readers to contribute their

comments and observations regarding Tcl.

Deploying Modules ,Dale Southard ,SysAdmin Magazine, p. 13-16 ,2003-12

  • about Modules, the Tcl-based package for managing paths and environment variables in a shell environment.

Visual Cron 2.1 , Chip Castle ,SysAdmin Magazine ,p.55-56 ,2003-01

On the Suitability of Tcl/Tk for SYS ,Fred Hansen ,Software Engineering Institute ,2003-02

Rendering Tcl/Tk Windows as HTML ,Fred Hansen ,2003-02

Playing with Keyed Lists on Mac OS X Tcl/Tk Aqua 8.4.2 ,Michael J. Norton ,O'Reilly macdevcenter ,2003-06-27

  • about Tclx's Keyed Lists

Elementary Computer Graphics: Drawing with Pixels ,Michael J. Norton ,2003

2002

Lua/Perl/Python/Ruby/Tcl 2002

Network Diagramming and Monitoring with Scotty ,Brent Bice ,SysAdmin Magaine, p.29-32 ,2002-01

TCL/TK and SKILL Mix It Up ,Chris Nelson ,Dr. Dobb's ,2002-02-01

Web site offers open-source TCL scripts ,Richard Goering ,EE Times ,2002-01-03

Expect Exceeds Expectations ,Cameron Laird ,2002

Scientific visualisation with VTK and Tcl ,Carsten Zerbst ,Linux Magazine ,Issue 16 ,2002

Hidden Treasures ,Useful Tcl and Tcllib functions ,Carsten Zerbst ,Linux Magazine ,Issue 18 ,2002

Freedom ,Processing XML documents with Tcl and tDOM ,Linux Magazine ,Issue 20 ,2002

Embeddable Fuzzy-Logic-Toolkit Software for Tcl/Tk ,NASA Tech Brief ,2002-10


Michael Schlenker writes: "There is a 5-page article about tclhttpd in the august issue of the german Linuxmagazin (08/2002), written by Carsten Zerbst.

The full text seems unavailable online.

Some (very simple) example listings from the article can be found at ftp://ftp.linux-magazin.de/pub/magazin/2002/08/Feder-Lesen


3-D Data Visualization on Mac OS X ,Michael J. Norton ,O'Reilly macdevcenter.com ,2002-06-28

2001

Tcl/Tk now available for Aqua/Mac OS X ,Ernest Prabhakar ,Open Source Product Manager , apple.com ,2001-10-16

Tcl your Java apps ,Benedict Chng ,JavaWorld ,2001-03-23

Android: Open-Source Scripting for Testing and Automation ,Larry Smith and Cameron Laird ,Dr. Dobb's ,2001-07-01 j

Network Test Automation with Mac OS X and Tcl ,Michael J. Norton ,O'Reilly macdevcenter ,2001-10-26

2000

An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl ,Lutz Prechelt ,2000-03-14

  • Real reports of about 80 implementations of the same problem by different people, in a variety of languages. The paper draws conclusions on performance, speed of development, reliability and the like.

Using SWIG to interface scripting languages with C/C++ ,Pramode C.E and Gopakumar C.E ,Linux Gazette ,Issue 49 ,2000-01

An introduction to Tk ,Charles Vidal ,2000-11

  • with links to translation of the article to 5 languages: French, Englsih, Nederlands, Russian, and Turkish.

Creating PGM Multicast Packets Using Tcl ,Michael J. Norton ,O'reilly ,2000-04-21

1999

Automating Your Site with Expect ,Mike Schwager ,SysAdmin Magazine ,Volume 8,p.49-54 ,1999-11

Computerworld featured the NBC control room in January, 1999:

1998

A Generated XML Interface to an Abstract MarketData Service: A large Swiss bank wanted to develop a web-based internet quotes and trading information service for end users

Rapid Prototyping with Tcl/Tk ,Richard Schwaninger ,Linux Journal ,1998-05-01

Tcl/Tk: The Swiss Army Knife of Web Applications ,Bill Schongar ,Linux Journal ,1998-11-01

Automating Tasks with EXPECT ,Vinnie Saladino ,Linux Journal ,1998-10-01

XML Support for Tcl ,Steve Ball ,Sixth Annual Tcl Workshop ,1998-09-14

TclBlend: Blending Tcl and Java ,Scott Stanton ,Dr. Dobb's ,1998-02-01

SWIG and Automated C/C++ Scripting Extensions ,David Beazley ,Dr. Dobb's ,1998-02-01

Creating High Performance Web Applications using Tcl, Display Templates, XML, and Database Content ,Alex Shah and Tony Darugar ,Sixth Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop ,1998-09-14

1997

Sun releases scripting technology for Java ,Jacl promises more power for Java ,Cameron Laird and Kathryn Soraiz 1997-12-01

Agent Tcl: A flexible and secure mobile-agent system ,a thesis ,Dartmouth College ,Robert S. Gray ,1997-06-30

There is a PDF article from July/August 1997 at http://computer.org/internet/ on Agent Tcl

Tcl/Tk-based Agents for Mail and News Notification ,Don Libes ,1997

Using TCL as a scripting language for an application written in C ,ungod ,C-Scene ,Issue 2 ,1997-08-27

Agent Tcl ,Robert S. Gray ,Dr. Dobb's ,1997-03-01

OI to Tcl/Tk Migration for WFO-Advanced ,Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory,1997-11-05

1996

A Tcl/Tk-Based, Intelligent Graphical Editor for Preparing HST Programs ,D. J. Asson, A. Bose, A. Krueger ,Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems V ASP Conference Series, Vol. 101, 1996 ,George H. Jacoby and Jeannette Barnes, eds.

1993

There's also http://www.computer.org/dt/dt1993/d2046abs.htm , an article about an early 80s effort to create a C++ binding for Tcl and a debugger.

Article Sources

http://www.usenix.org/ has quite a number of articles and papers that have been presented at conferences or published in their monthly journal which relate to Tcl and Tk, including a semi-regular column by Clif Flynt.

The X Resource, a publication by O'Reilly's, has published a few articles on Tcl and Tk. Unfortunately, I don't think the articles themselves are available only - the source from the articles is available on ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/xresource/issue11/ though.

Carsten Zerbst has a column on Tcl/Tk for LinuxMagazin .

http://www.linux-magazine.com/ appears to have published over 30 articles related to Tcl - the most recent being in August, 2003. These articles are available in PDF format. See, for instance,


The Tcl/Tk Journal

never got past the first issue, but had a couple of good articles on CGI and architecture.

The "Way Back Machine" has the one and only issue at [L4 ].


ieee.org

macdevcenter.com

Since 2002, Michael J. Norton has been publishing pieces Since 2002 ,Michail J. Norton has been publishing pieces, nominally about Mac OS X, but which generally can be interpreted in terms of Tcl scripting for all the usual platforms.

Historical

sunworld.com

WebReview did an article on Tcl which is available at http://webreview.com/wr/pub/freeware/tcl.html

At http://www.w3j.com/ you find the archives of the WWW Journal, a publication by O'Reilly's which covers the world of the Web. A number of articles have been published relating to Tcl ; use their search engine to find the currently available ones.

Byte Magazine had a few articles specifically about Tcl over the years, as well as references in a number of others. See for instance

http://www.byte.com/art/9602/sec11/art1.htm

http://www.byte.com/art/9704/sec5/art5.htm

and if you search their site, you will also find references relating to products reviewed which use Tcl.

Text versions of articles from ;Login: regarding Tcl can be found at http://reality.sgi.com/employees/jes/home.html .

The Developer.com site did a profile on John Ousterhout at http://www.developer.com/journal/profiles/060398_ouster.html . There are a couple of articles on Jacl, as well as a few other Tcl references at this web site. They have created a Tcl directory at http://www.developer.com/directories/pages/dir.tcl.html in yet another attempt to categorize Tcl offerings. See http://www.developer.com/reference/library/1575211025/ch29.htm for a longer article on using Tcl with Java.

The bioinformatic part of GNOMICS - the small genome sequencing group - was written 99% in Tcl/Tk. See the article on http://www.nature.com/cgi-bin/wbsp-article.cgi?art=396133A0&artlist=36482723.art:396133AO:392015AO:396109A0:396133A0:392015A0:392037A0:390364A0&def=36476ab2.def&deflist=36352b7b.def:3632fd17.def:362b44dd.def:362171c2.def:36216c9c.def:361a3df1.def:360fca6d.def : and notice figures 1 and 2 - which are Tk canvas dumps.

http://www.multimania.com/droche/article_tcl/article.html is an article in French, written for the French Linux magazine http://www.wsf.fr/pearl/linux/linuxmag.htm .

The WebTechniques http://www.webtechniques.com/ magazine continues to publish articles on Tcl and Tk on occasion. See the 1997 article on the Tcl Plugin http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1997/12/junk/ , the 1999 issue for Steve Ball's article on Scripting XML with Tcl, http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1999/10/junk/ the 2000 article on Web agents written in Tcl/Tk http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/03/schrenk/ , and many more - more than 45 hits on Tcl are found.

Frank Pilhofer [L5 ] has written an article on getting dynamic extensions written in C++ to work. It can be found at http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/%7Efp/Tcl/tcl-c++/ in various formats. The text only covers Unix issues.

There is a brief introduction to Tcl and Tk by the developer.com site at http://www.developer.com/reference/library/0672310120/html/ch30.htm . This article appears to be related to Red Hat Linux Unleashed. and appears to have been written by Rick McMullin.

At Linux Month, there are [L6 ] there is Tcl coverage in various articles.

element k publishes a journal on DBM. They have published articles on OraTcl such as http://www.elementkjournals.com/dbm/0007/dbm0071.htm

O'Reilly's publishes all sorts of articles - here are a few articles relating to Tcl

Also, an article on XML tools and Jacl can be found at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-xjacl?open&l=443,t=gr

"Perl guru Charlie Stross" nicely introduces Tcl to the Linux Format [L10 ] audience in his "What on Earth is Tcl?" [L11 ]. Quibbles are minor, and most exacerbated by publishing delays: URLs are given for scriptics.com and neosoft.com rather than tcl.tk. He fails to credit the Expect book properly for its coverage of Tk. Overall, it's plenty readable and useful. Patrick Finnegan summarizes: "it's ideal for proselytising managers and potential Tcl programmers."

"Using Tcl as Application Glue for the Enterprise" [L12 ]


The Great Computer Language Shootout: http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

A comparison of the performance of 30 languages spread over 25 benchmark tests. The performance alone is interesting, but not the most valuable aspect of this site. Being able to see the same piece of code implemented in different languages is a great way to get an idea for the syntax and style of a language. No matter how fast or expressive it is, you have to like programming in it for it to be a worthwhile choice.

CL mentions http://www.amag.com/documents/s=8955/sam0310web1/ in connection to information about Expect.

LV Dec 15, 2005, Over in comp.lang.tcl, there has been discussion about starting an online magazine for Tcl at http://www.tcltalk.com/ . If you would like to contribute material for the magazine, contact the editor as listed on that page.

to sort


Cameron Laird is writing a new column called Tcl Counselor, which can be found at http://www.zdnet.com/developer/ (See index [L13 ]) Cameron also keeps his own index [L14 ]

Larry Virden: Be aware that some browsers (at least SPARC Solaris Netscape Communicator 4.76!) has 'indigestion' with the zdnet.com site. That is to say, when I try the above pages, some render, some don't, some take a very long time to render, etc. Don't blame the author for the sins of the webmasters...

"Bonjour toi !" en Tcl/tk ,David Zolli ,Linux Magazine ,French Edition

"Les nouveautés de Tcl/Tk 8.6 ,Gerard Sookahet ,Linux Magazine n°165 ,novembre 2013, French Edition.


[It appears this page was truncated at some point :-( ]


[L15 ] is a page on Tcl articles. Though the web site is French, the articles appear to be a variety of languages.


AM Here is a list of scientific papers mentioning Tcl


See also Tcl Bibliography for very old references.