Version 25 of Cross Platform differences in Tcl/Tk

Updated 2007-03-13 15:09:32

Purpose: Document (particularly core distribution) Tcl and Tk differences between supported platforms.

  • Features unique to X Windows versions of Tk
  1. -display support
  2. The send command (while Mac OS X using an X server supports send (what about Aqua MacOS X Tcl/Tk?), send still does not work out of the box in standard distributions of Windows yet)
  • Features unique to Microsoft Windows versions of Tk
  1. Windows specific Tcl commands
  2. [What are the Windows specific extensions - like registry, etc.]
  3. dde package
  • Features unique to Apple MacOS X versions of Tk
  1. [What are the MacOS X specific extensions]
  2. The resource command
  • Features which work differently
  1. Native widgets on Windows/MacOS X vs Unix Tcl and C widgets [is there a wiki page detailing which of these exist]
  2. menu unpost is documented to not work on windows
  3. [wm attributes] takes different values on Windows/MacOS, and does nothing on Unix (in Tcl/Tk 8.4.9.0, at least).
  4. Icon support in wm.
  5. Mouse wheel bindings.
  6. "Right" mouse button bindings - Mac users expect "context" menus to work with Control-Button-1; Button-3 seems to be the mouse wheel, if a three-button mouse is connected.
  7. The file command, especially with directory separators/network drives/etc.
  8. The exec command has different forms on different platforms, and works slightly differently
  9. glob (with regard to directory separators)
  10. The tcl_pkgPath variable is missing(!!!) in the Windows version of Tcl. I have no ideea why people would intentionally do such a thing.

Something probably belongs on this page about key names and behaviors - keys like ` have different names on different platforms I believe. Perhaps there are other keys with the same issue?


GSoC2007 Tcl/Tk Application