Purpose: to discuss this Tk introspection tool.  The purpose of this tool is the allow one to inspect the contents of variables, arrays, and procs of a running Tk application that permits one to communicate via '''[send]''' (or potentially '''[comm]''').

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Tkinspect [ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-7.6/devel/tkinspect-5.1.6.tar.gz] has quite a history in the [Tcl/Tk] environment.  Created by [Sam Shen], tkinspect provides the ability to examine and modify the procs and variables of any Tcl/Tk application with a working "send" command.

Later, Sam moved on and a few other people have since made
modifications.  [John Robert LoVerso] [http://www.schooner.com/~loverso/tcl-tk/] modified tkinspect so that it  used comm instead of send.  This allowed one to run tkinspect
under any operating system which supports sockets.

[Paul Healy] then wrote a patch so that tkinspect knows about Tcl 8 namespaces [ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-7.6/devel/tkinspect-5.1.6p3.patch.tar.gz].

[Tako Schotanus] wrote a patch for TkInspect so it worked with incr Tcl [http://huizen.dds.nl/%7Equintess/].

[Mike Clarkson] overhauled its GUI and included it in [TixApps].

Tkinspect is currently in need of an adoptive parent who could integrate the various fixes and modifications into a great tool.


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[PT] writes: I've created a CVS repository with tkinspect-5 and the above patches applied plus a number of other update, enhancements and bug fixes. The application is now being hosted as a module in the [SourceForge] [tkcon] project [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkcon] You can checkout the current CVS working files by executing
  cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.tkcon.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tkcon login
  cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.tkcon.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tkcon co tkinspect

The current file release (March 2002) is 5.1.6p7 which incorporates support for use under windows (using [dde] or [comm] instead of [send] ), support for [incr Tcl] 3.2 and a number of bug fixes.

Bug reports, patches and feature requests all to be submitted to the tkcon project tracker please [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkcon]

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Discussion about generalising the [send] command moved to [Transport independent send]

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[Category Application]
[Category Debugging]