I guess I qualify as a "Tcl'er," having unleashed four Tcl applications upon the world:
WISH Supernotepad, a simple text and HTML editor - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/supernotepad.tar.gz
WISH-Book, a simple e-text reader - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/wishbook.tar.gz
WISH Launch-Box, a simple program launcher - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/launchbox.tar.gz
WISH CD-Writer, a super-simple front end to "mkisofs" and "cdrecord" for writing and rewriting CDs - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/wishcd.tar.gz
I'm not a professional programmer, just a home computer user and hobbyist. I never heard of Tcl until at least the spring of 1999, when I installed Linux on my home computer. (I did that because Windows 3.1 wasn't Y2K compliant and I wasn't interested in "upgrading" to a later version of Windows.) After a fairly slow start, I actually managed to use Linux with some success on my old 486/66 machine with the help of some programs I found on the TUCOWS Linux 4-CD set that came out in midsummer 1999. Three of the most useful ones were written, in whole or in large part, in Tcl/Tk: Henrik Harmsen's FileRunner (far superior to the slow, clunky "xfm" file manager that came with Red Hat Linux 5.2); Curtis L. Olson's CBB (Check Book Balancer), quicker than Quicken for simple home finances; and Joseph Acosta's TkNotePad, the least geeky, most familiar-looking and -acting text editor I could find in the bizarre new world of emacs, vi, pico, and their ilk. By the end of 1999, with the help of programs such as these, I had achieved my goal of Windows-less Y2K compliance: I bought a new computer, installed Linux (Mandrake 6.1) as the only operating system, and didn't look back (I'm now up to Mandrake 8.2).
Somehow I picked up the idea that Tcl was a lot simpler than the average programming language, and I began to wonder if even I might be able to write programs in it. I saw Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers by Clif Flynt on the library shelf, checked it out, and read it. I don't think I derived a lot of benefit from it (probably because I wasn't a real programmer), but it did get me pretty interested in learning how to make widgets do things on a computer, and it convinced me that Tcl/Tk was my best bet for success. (It appeared to be the simplest and most comprehensible language available for writing GUI-based programs, plus it didn't require the programmer to do any time-consuming, loathsome compiling!)
What really got me going was Graphical Applications in Tcl & Tk (2nd edition) by Eric Foster-Johnson. Here was a book (and a CD-ROM) that contained lots of fairly simple scripts that would do things I wanted done, and that explained how and why this and that specific bit of code would do this and that specific thing. Emboldened by this book and by the Tcl/Tk Programmer's Reference by Christopher Nelson, I started to modify the Tk NotePad code to get it to do more things, such as to display a "Save Changes?" indicator on the title bar when there was unsaved text in the text widget.
After a few failed efforts I succeeded, but I couldn't stop there. I kept thinking of more things I wanted my text editor to do, and trying to find ways to do them: to insert special characters with a single click; to insert whole files into the middle of my text; to display colors and insert hexadecimal codes for them; to insert HTML codes rapidly; to write new Tcl scripts and instantly test-run them; and even to check my actual, ultimate speed and accuracy in typing text that I found interesting, which existing typing-instruction programs typically didn't do. Starting with the code from Tk NotePad and from Eric Foster-Johnson's "textedit.tcl," and with valuable help from several other Tcl'ers (most notably Elchonon Edelson), eventually I developed WISH Supernotepad 0.9.0, which can do all these things and more.
After the programs named above, what? A basic but somewhat versatile, ready-to-use, freely available OCR application--read my lips: "I'm not satisfied with Clara or GOCR/JOCR"--that will work on Linux? (Pause for laughter--I'll leave that one for Richard Suchenwirth to crank out in a weekend or two, and I hope those weekends will come soon! When he gets it done, I'll be glad to serve as a beta tester, documentation writer, or both.)
My best guess is that I'll explore the possibilities of a multi-column listbox and corresponding entry widgets for creating, maintaining, retrieving, and displaying simple tabular lists of data (such as data on the hundreds of books that fill my family's home). QuickList (which uses GTK+) is good, but it has a few quirks and limitations that I'll bet I can overcome, maybe with the help of some more knowledgeable and experienced Tcl'ers. Braving the prospect of groans about puns, I might even call my program "WISH-List"--if someone hasn't already braved the groans and used the name.
David McClamrock
Email: mailto:[email protected] Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/
Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA