Zinc is a Tk [widget] developed with [Perl]/Tk, [Tcl]/Tk and [Python]/Tk bindings. Zinc widgets are very similar to Tk [canvas]es 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.

See http://www.openatc.org/zinc/ .

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[IDG]
Has anyone successfully compiled zinc on Windows?

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As the developper 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:lecoanet@ath.cena.fr. Funnily I was not aware of this page until now
(22 Jan 2003)

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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 

mertz@removethis-cena.fr

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[Category Package], dependant on [Tk]
- [Category Graphics]