Getting started with Tcl TK?

Question

One of my modules at the university next year will include programming in Tcl tk, I was wondering where to find the best resources and information about the language so that I am well prepared. I am currently looking at this site , which is very useful, but the book they recommend is quite old, and I was wondering if anyone could recommend any other books for purchase or if the language has not changed significantly since the book was released in 1999 ?

Also, what projects or examples should I start working to familiarize me with the language?

Any other information would be extremely helpful and appreciated!

I posted this question because I couldn’t find anyone like that, sorry if I hadn’t looked hard enough.

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

Some of the books that I have in my library that may be useful to you are as follows:

• Tcl and Tk Toolkit (Ousterhout) - A book in Tcl / Tk, and probably the one you are talking about. This is old and some information is a bit dated, but it is fantastic (and, I think, I say this without exaggeration) when showing how to program in Tcl. It was written by a language writer.
• Practical programming in Tcl and Tk (Welch) - Another book on Tcl / Tk that almost everyone who has programs in it seriously has in their library. Brent did a great job with this book.
• Effective Tcl / Tk Programming: Writing Better Tcl and Tk Programs (Harrison, McLennon) - Once you get larger, more complex programs, this book can be very readable. He is part of an organization and the like. This book probably goes beyond what you need at the moment, but I mention it because it reads very well when you delve into Tcl.

Also worth bookmarking is the Tcler Wiki . Sometimes he may feel a little disorganized, but there is more information than ... well, anywhere. This is an amazing resource.

Distributing ActiveTcl is really the way to go. People at ActiveState are a smart group.

Answer 2

You are familiar with Active Tcl . If not, then this is the best place to look for resources and documentation.

Answer 3

You can also try TclTutor an interactive application in which you can not only learn materail, but also try it right away.

Answer 4

I also recommend Tcl and Tk Toolkit. This is great for understanding the Tcl core, although I can’t comment on how useful it is as a reference (I use the online documentation for this). The second edition of Tcl and Tk Toolkit is currently available as a “Rough Cut” from Safari Books Online (which means you can download a draft PDF now and the final PDF when the book is released). It looks like they added a ton of information about Tk, especially themed widgets that were introduced in 8.5. They also added some information to the Tcl section, including dictionaries.

Answer 5

but the book they recommend is quite old,

The fact about tcl is that it's pretty old, the Ousterhout book is still the best tcl book (and IMHO, almost classic). There was never even a second edition , although, apparently, it is in the process of creation. tcl was a great idea at the time, and it wasn’t very painful to study it, but it didn’t support it and frankly had a lot of design problems from the very beginning. Don't get me wrong, I was a huge fan of tcl that day, but this is not the best thing to learn now. If you decide to continue, take the used copy of the original book and use online resources.

Tcl’s original goal was to be lightweight and free to eliminate the need for a multitude of native command languages ​​that people write to add interactivity to their applications. The Tk toolkit was later added, and it was the easiest and most free way to add a GUI to the application.

Today there are much more options available (for example, for the graphical interface, Qt is now under LGPL, therefore it is almost as free in Tk. To add a command line interface to an existing C / C ++ application, the closest modern Lua tool, but even more powerful languages, such as ruby ​​and python are not much harder to integrate with C / C ++ applications (especially with tools like boost python and SWIG ).

Answer 6

There is a second edition of Ousterhout, updated and supplemented by Ken Jones. It releases the year 2010, so the second edition is quite relevant. In addition, the wiki page http://wiki.tcl.tk/57 has a list of books that are related to Tcl in some capacity.

Answer 7

Use this invaluable reference guide or the more up-to-date quick ref (thanks to Colin Macleod).

Answer 8

There is a lot of information about the Tcl Wiki , although it can be hard to find. Take a look at the Recent Changes page to show that a lot of activity is happening.

Answer 9

The ability to program in Tcl may not land you at work, but it will certainly help you get the job done quickly. I learned Tcl back in 1996, and Tcl is still one of my favorite programming languages ​​for most of my daily sys administration tasks. In most cases, I can accomplish the same task when my programming colleagues are still on a drawing board designing object classes.

Answer 10

Besides the great suggestions from the other comments, I just need to add Tcl for the Nerd website from Philip Greenspoon, creator of Tcl-based ACS (which later became OpenACS ).

Answer 11

I learned this with Practical Programming in TCL / TK. It is very good. Along with this, the TCL-TK tool book was also very useful.

Answer 12

The most recent book I know about Clif Flynt Tcl / Tk: Developer's Guide . The third edition was published in 2012 by Morgan Kaufman, and it covers (as I write this answer) the current version of Tcl: 8.6 .

I only had a book in my house for a week, but it looks pretty thorough, and I like what I read so far.

I own and read both the Ousterhout Tcl and the Tk Toolkit and Welch Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk (2nd ed.), And I liked them. But Tcl seems to have come a long way since my copy of Welch was published and a very long way with Ousterhout's. There are some really important / nice things that have been added to the main language / library.

(By the way, I also thought that the new paperback price was extremely reasonable on Amazon for almost 800 pages of volume.)