[Rildo Pragana] Here are the results of some experiments toward a full tcl/tk desktop, packaged as a (writable) starkit.
You can have the details and downloads from http://pragana.net. 

Here is the latest version: http://pragana.net/tdesk-20050312.kit
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'''12Mar2005'''
Many improvements on the tcl desktop (or as I call it tdesk, unless you suggest me a better name for it!). Now the window manager is integrated, there are tweaked versions of specTcl (gui builder), a small editor (ml), and the html viewer (tkhtml). Besides that, some other libs are added, at least during the experimentation phase. It looks great now! The starkit is "writable", so you may use the tools above to create a custom version of it. That's my central idea: to have something very flexible and simple, with the most needed tools already self-contained.

The window manager is simply aewm 1.2.5 with minor changes and a tcl interface to it. The way tk handle X events makes near to impossible to write a window manager as a regular extensions (many events are filtered out). So the idea is to let the window manager run as a separate process with its own X connection, and communicate with the other desktop components which needs Tk (for instance, when we are going to map a new window, the wm process ask the tk process to create a toplevel which will be the outer frame for the mapped window...). 

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'''03Mar2005'''
To start the (very experimental) desktop environment, please use a script like that:

 #!/bin/sh
 X :1 &
 export DISPLAY=:1
 xfwm4 &
 exec ./tdesk-20050303.kit

''As of March 12, there is already an embeeded window manage, so take out the line with xfwm4''

If you don't have xfwm4 (the window manager from xfce), you may try others, but in some of them you will have weird things like title bars in the desktop window, no buttons in the taskbar (running applications). If you have "metacity" (the gnome window manager), it works fine too. In the future, I plan to make "tdesk" include its window manager too.

As about the license for all this, it is free as Tcl's license. If you make improvements, I'd be happy to include here, please send me. 

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'''02Mar2005'''
I'm doing some experiments with a tcl-centered desktop environment. It is very crude yet, but I plan to give it the (best) features of the most common desktops, but without the bloat, of course. The best of all, it will be scriptable in tcl, simple and very small. Here is a preview screenshot of what it looks like.

[http://pragana.net/images/tdesk1a.jpg]

If you are adventurous, here is a starkit (new version, corrected) with the latest development (not released, I warned you!). Don't expect too much, but there are some things that already work, at least partially: the file manager can navigate directories and will show images if "xv" is present; you may drag any items from the right panel of the file manager and drop into the desktop, and also the other way (just to get a dialog to choose the action); the taskbar may activate and raise the selected window. You may get the tcl console by Control-clicking with the right mouse button anywhere, then you may start a regular xterm with the command "xterm &".

You may navigate inside the virtual starkit directory and read the source code for the extension "wmx", with some commands needed to make this beast operate! There is no window manager yet, so you must choose a suitable. I had success with xfwm4, metacity, lwm, icewm (with some bugs), and several others. Most really minimal don't work fully. I will have to tweak some code for a tcl-only window manager to integrate in this desktop yet, and to stay light and simple. By the way, many things are in portuguese, but don't be frightened, because it mimmicks *Win* stuff (to show my friends!).

Okay, many things yet to be done, but what you think? Would you like to help me? If so, please e-mail me at rildo@pragana.net.

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Category Desktop