I guess I qualify as a "Tcl'er," having unleashed six Tcl applications upon the world:
WISH List, a simple multi-column list manager - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/wishlist.tar.gz
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 Command Center, a simple program launcher - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/wishcom.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
WISH Mini-Console, a simple Unix-type command console optimized for Tcl/Tk - http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/wishmin.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.)
Actually, I may dare to try to turn WISH Supernotepad into a fairly simple word processor that will beat the pants off WordPad (except that it is not going to read or write the objectionable MS Word file format). This may take a while. If it actually happens, I'll let you know.
David McClamrock
Email: mailto:[email protected] Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock/
Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
RA2 Any of your apps run on Windows? I'm not a Linux user. :-(