In [the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup], I asked:  "Does anyone here have any thoughts or pointers into the [Wiki], or to papers that might help us port our current Tcl-[Tk] [GUI]s to a browser without re-coding in [Java]?" 

I received the following suggestions:  

   * [Marty Backe] suggested [tcljava] and [swank], "particularly the latter."  [CL] observes that Swank is for use with the [Jacl] part of [Tcljava].

   * [Tom Poindexter] suggested:  "You might try [WeirdX], it's an X11 server written in Java, and runs as a browser applet.  I've used this in the past to deliver Tcl/Tk applications for internal users.  It's suitable for running on fast, secure networks."  

   * Tom also suggests:  "[Proxy Tk] would also be an idea, but to my knowledge, it never made it into public consumption".  [Bryan Oakley]  also offered the same suggestion, continuing:  "The short summary is, you write tk on the server which drives a thin client that  translates the tk commands into java widgets in the client.   The software isn't available, but it looks like a fairly straight-forward thing to reinvent.  Unless your guis are trivial, it may take less effort to reinvent proxytk than it would be to recode all of the GUIs in Java." 

   * Several folks suggested [VNC].  As of 2006, CL is doing a lot of work with VNC-in-a-browser; expect this to become public in late September.

   * [Donal Fellows] suggested: "If you end up having to do Java GUIs, start by porting the Tk geometry managers to Java as the standard ones are not really very good (GridBagLayout sucks a lot more than you might think at first.  Trust me.)  That'll save you much frustration."  

   * [Roy Terry] suggested:  "You can run Tcl/Tk as an [activeX] object using [TclControl].  I believe, but haven't done the work, that you could also package the tclcontrol along with the needed Tcl/Tk dlls, etc. into a CAB file and have the whole thing download seamlessly on Windows."  A paper [http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~fuzz/TclControl/] provides details.

   * CL also believes that good engineering judgment in such a matter depends on details.  Is the GUI just a buttons-and-entry form-oriented office-automation sort of thing, or does it involve a lot of [canvas] sophistication?  What network characteristics can be assumed?  What security and licensing models are involved?

   * [Roy Keene] suggested:  It should be possible to emulate the Tk functionality in Tcl, and also provide an HTML rendering engine for the psuedo-Tk widgets in HTML.  An incomplete example [http://www.rkeene.org/viewer/projects/tkweb/tkweb.tcl.htm] [http://www.rkeene.org/projects/tkweb/] is available for examination.  A [Tkweb] screenshot  ( http://www.rkeene.org/projects/tkweb/tkweb-test1-2.png ) is also available.  This method is also discussed by Wilfred J. Hansen [http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2004/Tcl2003papers/rendering.doc] .

    * [Æjaks] Although not directly compatible with Tk, Æjaks provides a very similar programming model.  

    * By 2010, [HTML5] has caught up sufficiently to offer '''canvas''', [SVG], and other interesting advances that duplicate parts of Tk's style.

Eventually this goes in the same direction: [Matthias Hoffmann - Thoughts And Ideas]|[Generating HTML with commands styled after Tk]??

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[Googie] - 2011-05-28 - I was playing a little with [ajax] lately (using [jquery]) and I believe Tk can be implemented (more or less accurately) using tools like [jquery] or [dojo] or something similar for frontend, then some object orientation package on Tcl side ([TclOO] most probably) + json::write from [Tcllib]. What do you guys think?

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[Martin Cleaver] - 2011-12-16 - believes that transpiling tcltk into coffeescript and html5 would be a worthy goal. 
   * https://twitter.com/#!/mrjcleaver/status/144383825890377728
   * https://twitter.com/#!/markroseman/status/144418651011948545

[Category Internet] | [Category GUI]