Zinc is a Tk widget developed with Perl/Tk, Tcl/Tk and Python/Tk bindings. Zinc widgets are very similar to Tk canvases in that they support structured graphics. Graphical items can be manipulated, and bindings can be associated with them to implement interaction behaviors. But unlike the canvas, zinc can structure the items in a hierarchy, and has support for affine 2D transforms. Clipping can be set for sub-trees of the item hierarchy and the item set is quite more powerful, including field-specific items for Air Traffic systems. Zinc is fast enough to allow the implementation of 2k2k radar displays with smooth animations. It is structured enough to allow the implementation of direct manipulation desktop GUIs.
Since the 3.2.2 version, Zinc also offers as a runtime option, the support for openGL rendering, giving access to features such as antialiasing, transparency, color gradients and even a new, openGL oriented, item type : triangles . In order to use the openGL features, you need the support of the GLX extension on your X11 server.
What: Zinc
Where: http://www.openatc.org/zinc/
Description: Widget with Tcl, Perl, and Python Tk bindings. Similar to
canvas, but supports hierarchical structuring and affine 2d transforms.
Clippings can be set for subtrees.
Currently at version 3.2.6 .
Updated: 09/2001
Contact: mailto:lecoanet at cena dot fr IDG Has anyone successfully compiled zinc on Windows?
As the developer of zinc I am interested in a port to Windows without knowing where to start. I am not acquainted with Windows tools and somewhat afraid of spending too much time on this aspect of zinc development. Not to mention cross platform testing after adding new features, etc... I don't know what interest there would be for this kind of component under Windows, may be it is worth the effort.
Any comments? mailto:[email protected] . Funnily I was not aware of this page until now (22 Jan 2003)
As a heavy user of Zinc (through the perl/Tk binding), I would really be interested in a port of Zinc to Windows. This would allow us to port some of our prototypes on Windows, even if we will stay on Linux for our development. To get an idea of what we are doing with Zinc, you can have a look at http://www.tls.cena.fr/divisions/PII/digistrips/ or to some screenshots of other applications: http://www.openatc.org/zinc/screenshots.html
Zinc is also a metallic chemical element, symbol Zn, that is often found in dry cells used to power small electrical equipment (e.g. torches, alarm clocks, etc.).
A bit of history: Zinc stands for Zinc Is Not Canvas. And Zinc is also a colloquial french word for plane, which seemd great when working in a HMI research team for Air Traffic Control.
Zinc was also a '90s era commercial GUI framework that might now be owned by Wind River.
That is why now, the real name became TkZinc and it appeears as so in the doc.
Damn! Looks very interesting. Given the item hierarchy abilities, does anybody else see this as possibly the basis of a real tk html display widget?
Why does Tcl seem to have caught on so much better in the francophone world? We may have to change its name to Freedom Script.
Category Package, dependent on Tk - Category Graphics