iLiad Tcl/Tk for iLiad?

[ericshliao]

I just compiled and installed Tcl/Tk in Scratchbox target for iLiad because they are needed by Python. In fact, I don't know what are they. With some brief review of the official site, I only caught the key word "rapid development".
So, my question is: do we need it for iLiad?

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

I just compiled and installed Tcl/Tk in Scratchbox target for iLiad because they are needed by Python. In fact, I don't know what are they. With some brief review of the official site, I only caught the key word "rapid development".
So, my question is: do we need it for iLiad?

I'm quite a fan of Tcl/Tk, so...

Tcl/Tk is a scripting language with a very well designed UI (API-wise). It is rather small (in KB) as it is designed to be included in applications. In spirit, it is similar to the lua+lgob port that you have seen here.

The API of the UI is so great, that it is (was?) the deafult GUI for python, hence its status as a dependency. It uses raw X (no GTK/Qt, etc although there are ports for a lot of platforms, including windows), and it shows its age, although newer versions have some skinning support.

The problem is that GUI programs written in TCL/Tk aren't as speedy as... say C+FLTK programs.

Tcl/tk is great for quick hacks, but for large programs it is adviseable to look elsewhere.

Anyway, I find writing programs in Tcl/Tk very enjoyable (much more that in python, for example).

[Iñigo]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

I just compiled and installed Tcl/Tk in Scratchbox target for iLiad because they are needed by Python. In fact, I don't know what are they. With some brief review of the official site, I only caught the key word "rapid development".
So, my question is: do we need it for iLiad?

tk is the GUI toolkit tcl language uses [1].
tkinter (tcl/tk for python) is a GUI included in python standard library. It's multiplatform, but not much people uses it nowdays (sorry Antartica, I thought you were younger ;-)

None of the previous iLiad python ports has included it before.
- https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24138
- https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12636
and yours - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30169

I like python a lot, it's my preferred language, but sadly enough it's somehow slow on the iLiad, that's the reason I learning lua now.
IMO, there is not much interest in tkinter.

Iñigo

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tk_%28framework%29

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by Iñigo

tk is the GUI toolkit tcl language uses [1].
tkinter (tcl/tk for python) is a GUI included in python standard library. It's multiplatform, but not much people uses it nowdays (sorry Antartica, I thought you were younger ;-)

Younger still?

"How old are you?" thread

Hope that using Tcl/Tk doesn't make me age at an accelerated pace X-).

Anyway, for hacks and light GUIs, it is still a valid option (in fact VMWare for Linux used it for quite a lot of versions until they did change to a "proper" GUI library).

In my case, I became addicted to Tcl/Tk in my OS/2 days; was looking for a scriptable way for doing UIs that worked for both OS/2 and Linux and that was what I found. Although I reckon that that was a long time ago X-).

[ericshliao]

Thanx for Antartica and Iñigo's explanation. I know Tcl/Tk better now.

OS/2? Quite a fantasy and legendary operation system. I used it once when it came out.