CDROM  CONTENTS: Real World Applications News and Web Robots Tcl Extensions Tcl and Computer Aided Engineering Tcl and the Single Database Tcl and Fortran

 

 Real World Applications

These articles describe ways that Tcl and Tk have been used in Real World applications ranging from sending automated birthday cards to controlling power in a computer room to managing cargo on ocean-going transport ships.

1. News and Web Robots

   Tcl/Tk is an excellent vehicle for writing web, news and mail processing robots. These application are generally limited by the speed of the internet connection, thus the applications don't generally need the speed of a compiled language. Given that the net is constantly changing, these applications do need to be revised frequently, and Tcl/Tk is a good tool for applications in which you may need to merge in a new procedure at a moment's notice.

   1. Welcome to Comp.Lang.Tcl

      The first time you post to comp.lang.tcl you will receive mail welcoming you to the group and letting you know about some of the available Tcl/Tk resources.

      Andreas Kupries describes the robot he wrote to send that mail.

   2. Happy Birthday Robot

      The readers and posters to the misc.writing newsgroup get E-Mail Birthday cards and greetings courtesy of this robot.

      Clif Flynt describes the nuts and bolts of a robot with no physical existence.

      The Web/News robot toolkit is available on the Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers CDROM.

2. Tcl Extensions

   One of the most useful features of Tcl/Tk is that the interpreter can easily be extended to perform new and perhaps unique applications.

   The chapters in Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers discussed general purpose programming extensions. These chapters discuss building extensions that solve more unique needs.

   1. A Tcl Extension for Controlling X-10 devices

      Doug Hughes needed a way to power-cycle computers remotely.

      Tcl and X-10 provided the solution to this problem.

      This extension is available on the Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers CDROM.

   2. A National Instruments Extension

      Clif Flynt needed to power cycle a rack of computers during burn-in testing. As part of developing the solution, he threw together a Tcl extension to use for prototyping.

      This chapter describes a quick-and-dirty approach to extension writing.

      This extension is available on the Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers CD-ROM.

   3. Introduction to SWIG

      The fastest method of creating extensions is to let SWIG do all the work.

      In this chapter David Beazley describes everything you need to know to use SWIG.

      The SWIG distributions are on the CD-ROM in the devel/swig directory.

3. Tcl and Computer Aided Engineering

   CAE systems have computational demands that would make you think that Tcl could never be of used in this arena. Surprisingly enough, Tcl was designed to be used for these types of applications.

   The facility with which Tk can provide a GUI while Tcl can provide scripting and customization to glue multiple compute engines into a package makes Tcl a fine vehicle for creating CAE packages.

   1. LISP and back again

      Christopher Nelson wanted to add functionality to the Cadence Design Framework without resorting to SKILL, Cadences' LISP-like scripting language. This chapter describes his package for communicating between SKILL and Tcl and presents a sample Tcl-based application.

   2. Annotated Network Diagram Visualisation using Tcl/Tk

      The University of Machester is doing some novel work with CPU design. This leads to CAE requirements that don't match the capabilities of traditional CAE engines.

      Donal Fellows developed a CPU design tool that is integrated with an existing simulator to allow designers to view the results of design changes.

4. Tcl and the Single Database

   Or multiple databases, for that matter.

   Tcl is frequently used with various SQL databases. The sybtcl and oratcl extensions are the best known SQL extensions to the Tcl language, but others also exist.

   Tcl's facility for being linked to an existing library makes it easy to create a Tcl script extension to an existing C language library, while Tk provides the tools to build a friendly GUI.

   1. Database Explorer

      In this chapter, Andreas Kupries describes an SQL database editor design package. The front end is Tcl/Tk, while the back end is the C language MySql package.

   2. UCO Wisql

      De Clarke briefly introduces the UCO Windowing Interactive SQL package.

      This package is on the Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers CD-ROM.

5. Tcl and Fortran

   Tcl/Tk is one of newest of programming languages while Fortran is the oldest programming language. It's not obvious that these two languages would work together, but Tcl/Tk can provide the modern user interface to the tried and true computational libraries written in Fortran.

   1. Tcl/Tk OnBoard

      Carsten Zerbst describes how Tk is used to help stow cargo and optimize shipping on the Roll-On-Roll-Off carriers in the oceans of Europe.

      Tcl/Tk for Real Programmers      
Clif Flynt

Academic Press Professional 1998
ISBN: 0122612051

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