Tcl-URL! Weekly Tcl News and Links (July 8)

QOTW: "I am more amazed that more people do not seem to be aware of the
speed of getting an 'idea' up and running in Tcl/Tk. I wonder if with
all the media and promotion (about 5 or more glossy mags) of Java, that
people are just not aware of how useful Tcl/Tk can be?  It seems to me
that much of what people use Java for can be done in Tcl/Tk. I found
that doing simple things in Tcl/Tk runs so much faster in 'runtime'
than Java on my old computer 200MHz."  getwell4u
    http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

"With rather more experience than I'd prefer, the problem with Java is
really that often not only is it taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut,
it's a red inflatable squeaky sledgehammer with a picture of a cartoon
character on it..."  Donal K. Fellows
    http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

"If so many people are interested in a working expect on windows with all
the features, why hasn't anyone contracted with ActiveState to have them
create it or done it themselves?"  David Gravereaux 


    Proceedings of the 3rd European Tcl/Tk user meeting are now avail-
    able!  Many thanks to Michael Haschek for putting them online:
        http://www.t-ide.com/tcl2002e.html
        http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

    Here's a challenge:  figure out which Tcl programmer most deserves
    an Active Award.  Voting for one of 
      John Almirante
      Vincent Darley
      Kevin B. Kenny
      Richard Suchenwirth
      Jean-Claude Wippler
    closes 17 July 2002.
        http://www.ActiveState.com/ActiveAwards2002

    New TIP: #105 "Add Prefix Matching for Switch"
        http://purl.org/tcl/tip/105.html
    Discussion
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=e6dd2061fb93e67d

    Zoran Vasiljevic explains inter-thread communication techniques:
        http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

    Don Porter talks about recent changes in the msgcat package:
        http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

    Radical Language Modification: George Peter Staplin describes an
    experiment that adds type-checking to Tcl.  Many comments follow.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3D1F57A7.9E1FCD55%40XMission.com

    George Howlett explains how to link BLT vectors and C arrays,
    and provides sample code to do so:
        http://groups.google.com/[email protected]
    Tcl/Tk Testimonial: "I will be taking a more seriously look
    into Tcl/Tk. It seems that Tcl/Tk does 'multi-platform'
    write once and run everywhere better than Java without
    being too slow on older computers."
        http://groups.google.com/[email protected]


Thanks to Arjen Markus for this summary:
    A fruitful two weeks on the Wiki, judging from the number of pages
    that have changed. In these two weeks in Europe there was the
    Third Tcl/Tk User meeting, with lots of interesting stuff,
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3043
    including live chats and real beer.  Thanks to Michael Haschek.

    Let us try to group all the information:
    
    General:
    - Scripted documents are the subject of 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3659
      what they are and how they relate to other things not Tcl.
    - The wishlist for Tcl 9.0 is growing - catch up on the latest items,
      at 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/883
    - Those great extensions and applications sometimes get orphaned, for
      various reasons. The orphanage is there to find them new maintainers,
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3587
      
    Interesting user-interface items:
      - Creating widgets with BWidgets is explained at 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/1916
      - Mike Doyle played with a miniature database manager and came up with  
        a local and a WWW one, 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3610
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3636
      - In need for multibyte-multilingual input? Here is "taiku", 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/3145
    
    Open database connection (ODBC) is discussed at 
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/2151
    in relation to "tclodbc".
    
    Lots of information for the programmer:
      - Object orientation is a recurring theme
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/970
        lists a lot of the Tcl solutions.
      - You may add a few discusions about integrated development environments,
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/3599
      - How to combine Tcl/Tk and an application in C? 
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/3474
        lists various approaches.

    Techniques for manipulating text:
      - The doctools documentation tools are described in some detail 
        at 
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/3054
        but see the links in that page.
      - tDOM, 
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/1948
        is an extension that deals with XML, XPath with a speed that
        no one should be ashamed of.
      - Talking of XML, why not try TclSOAP? 
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/1753
        might interest you as well.
    
    Cool algorithms:
      - You can build a decision tree, from the roots up, by listing a
        couple of facts, 
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/3563
      - Not only big trees can be built in Tcl, you can go down to the
        individual bits as well
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/3331
      - And should you need more, take a look at the gems in this page,
         http://wiki.tcl.tk/918
        

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    The "Welcome to comp.lang.tcl" message by Andreas Kupries
        http://www.purl.org/net/tcl-welcome

    Larry Virden maintains a comp.lang.tcl FAQ launcher
        http://www.purl.org/NET/Tcl-FAQ/

    Brent Welch maintains "The Tcl Developer Xchange", a highly
    organized resource center of documents and software with
    provisions for individuals to "set up a link to your software
    and update ... as you release new versions."
        http://www.tcl-tk.net/resource/
    The Xchange sponsor also keeps info to convince your boss Tcl
    is a good thing
        http://www.tcl-tk.net/scripting/      

    The Tcl'ers Wiki is a huge, dynamic, collaboratively edited repository
    of documentation, examples, tutorials and pontifications on all things Tcl.
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/0
    For the ideal overview of the topics about Tcl most likely to
    interest a newcomer, see "Arts and Crafts ..."
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/969

    ActiveState Tools maintains a Cookbook of Tcl recipes
        http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Tcl

    NeoSoft has a comp.lang.tcl contributed sources archive
        http://www.neosoft.com/tcl/contributed-software/

    Cameron Laird tracks many Tcl/Tk references of interest
        http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.tcl/

    Cetus Links maintains a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

    Google Groups archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/   

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/tcl/url.html
--in principal.  In spring 2001, though,
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/
  http://tcl.activestate.com:8004/tclurl/
are more consistently up-to-date.  A fourth possibility is                 
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Tcl-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.tcl  

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.

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