Purpose: to describe the tkcon application and the special
features that make it a worth the moments it takes to download.
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TkCon provides a console for interacting with [Tcl].  This console
has an input history, the ability to help loading packages,
ability to attach to running [Tk] applications (if on a system
which supports Tk's [send] command),

[[someone add more about the observe and idebug commands in tkcon]]

 What: TkCon
 Where: http://tkcon.sourceforge.net/
        http://www.purl.org/net/hobbs/tcl/script/tkcon/
        http://www.purl.org/net/hobbs/tcl/script/widget/
 Description: A Tcl/Tk source standard console.  It not only is a replacement
        for the one that comes with Tk on Windows and Macintosh, but can
        also be used under Unix.  Provides command history, path/proc/variable
        name expansion, multiple interpreter consoles, captures stdout and
        stderr, character and proc highlighting, history searching,
        copy/paste between consoles, communicate with other tk
        interpreters, supports dynamically loadable extensions,
        electric character and proc highlighting.  Latest version supports
        attaching to itcl/Tcl 8 namespaces.
        Regular updates occur - check pack on the WWW page for announcements.
        Requires Tcl/Tk 8.0+ .
        Currently version 2.2 .
        At the widget URL find a fully widgetised version of TkCon.
 Updated: 10/2001
 Contact: mailto:jeff@hobbs.org (Jeffrey Hobbs)
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[FPX]: In search of a console that I can pop up for interactive
debugging, I looked at tkcon and found out that the following code
does what I wanted to accomplish:

  namespace eval tkcon {}
  set tkcon::PRIV(showOnStartup) 0
  set tkcon::PRIV(root) .tkcon
  set tkcon::OPT(exec) ""
  source tkcon.tcl

I can now make the tkcon console show up and hide with

  tkcon show
  tkcon hide

respectively, and interact with the main interpreter.

(some minutes later): I have submitted a patch
[http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=527338&group_id=11462&atid=111462]
to sourceforge that makes tkcon into a package. With that patch, I
can do

  package require tkcon
  tkcon show
  tkcon hide

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[stevel]: tkcon packaged as a [starkit] can be found at http://mini.net/sdarchive/tkcon.bin. The tkcon "Help/Retrieve latest version" option will update the starkit with the latest CVS version of tkcon.tcl.

[LV] Steve, the code for retrieve latest version would be useful to turn into a proc that became part of tclkit's std environment, so that all starkits might do that.  Or at least, all the ones at sf.net...

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[Arts and crafts of Tcl-Tk programming]
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[[How to debug with tkcon:  explain idebug, observe, "hot errors", and state introspection.]]
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[Category Application]