Version 4 of Starter Tcl

Updated 2002-05-30 14:33:44

This page considers what software should be put in front of newcomers to the language.

Differs for different platforms - as well as for different intersets.

  • Unix
  1. C compiler (and CriTcl?) - needed to build non-script extensions
  2. GNU autoconf (only needed if a) you are building your own TEA compliant extensions or b) you need to generate the configure script from a CVS repository snapshot, I think)
  3. Some sort of text editor (See [Tcl Editors))
  4. Tcl - the place to learn hello, world
  5. TkTutor - a good tutorial for intro to Tcl
  6. Tk - the place to learn it graphically
  7. Tkcon - a recommended user interface
  8. Tcllib - a good collection of useful Tcl code
  9. Tclapps - some example tcl scripts - the most important of which is tkchat!
  10. TclX - a lot of useful Unix-like extras
  11. Expect - very useful to automate command line apps, also some nice debugging tools
  12. Img - very useful to display various image types
  13. Snack - sound generation
  14. Some sort of database Oratcl, etc.
  15. TclPro for visual debugger, static checker, binary wrapper
  16. Frink is another static checker
  17. tclvfs is in my opinion going to be a must have extension, for doing useful new things simply
  18. Thread is an extension to make simple threads available to the Tcl programmer
  19. Tcldom/Tclxml,and the rest of the family if you are going to be doing xml work.
  20. incr Tcl or one of the other object oriented extensions if you are going to be writing code of much complexity or size
  21. BLT, Tix, or one of the other megawidget/addon widget extensions
  22. The sample Tcl extension to show you how to organize a TEA compliant extension

Many/most of these are in ActiveTcl - however, not all platforms are supported by Activestate.

[ ActiveTcl, TclKit, Kitten, SmallTcl, ...]

  • MacOSD (what is MacOSD?)
  1. C compiler
  2. GNU autoconf (???)
  3. Some sort of text editor
  4. Tcl - the place to learn hello, world
  5. TkTutor - a good tutorial for intro to Tcl
  6. Tk - the place to learn it graphically
  7. Tkcon - a good interface
  8. Tcllib - a good collection of useful Tcl code
  9. QuickTimeTcl - interface to QuickTime
  • Windows

"Is there anything I should know before I start coding"

JCW - a plea: please also consider making some zlib implementation interface "standard" - its absence is preventing several valuable uses (mounting a ZIP with TclVFS, for example)