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Re: Unix/Win GUI re-evaluation



   Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 08:03:34 -0400
   From: Michael Tiller <mtiller@ford.com>

   Have you looked at using SWIG (http://www.swig.org) to automatically
   generate your C-coded Tcl commands?  There are a few other tools as well
   that do similar things.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought about SWIG, I'll take a look.

   Actually, there is work going on to improve the graphics.  I think the
   effort is called "Tkgs" although I'm not sure.  The goal was to improve
   the graphics subsystem while keeping it platform independent and
   incorporating a bunch of speedups.

I know about this.  It would probably help, since the current low-level
tk code is based on X11, which means that Win and Mac ports need to
emulate X11.  tkgs is only at the proposal stage, it will probably be
a year before it's available.

   Have you posted anything in comp.lang.tcl asking how to speed things
   up?  I know there is a Tk patch for Windows which improves canvases. 
   There may also be some tricks.

Jim Ingham (late of Sun's tcl group, and Mr. MacTk now) sits in the next
cubicle, and has been helping some - but he observes that the event loop
wants to get involved in the window update process, which is a fundamental
limit on the timing of updates.  But you're right, I should ping the
newsgroup just to be sure.

   > Finally, setting up the installation is very complicated, what with
   > libraries of tcl code and env vars to deal with.  Worse, there don't
   > seem to be many other examples to follow - the best seems to be Cygnus'
   > own use of tcl/tk in their GDB GUI, and that one is known to need
   > front-line support people to deal with all the things that go wrong,
   > even with prebuilt binary packages!

   Does Cygnus have a licensed copy of TclPro?  If so, you can use the
   "wrapper" application to make stand alone binaries.  There is also a
   freeware tool called "freewrap" which does the same thing (but only for
   Linux and Windows).

I think Jim has a copy - he knows all the Scriptics folks...

								Stan

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