path: root/README

README:  Tk

	Tk is maintained, enhanced, and distributed freely as a
	service to the Tcl community by Scriptics Corporation.

RCS: @(#) $Id: README,v 1.14 1999/04/16 01:51:07 stanton Exp $

Contents
--------
    1. Introduction
    2. Documentation
    3. Compiling and installing Tk
    4. Getting started
    5. Summary of changes in Tk 8.1
    6. Development tools
    7. Tcl newsgroup
    8. Tcl contributed archive
    9. Tcl Resource Center
    10. Mailing lists
    11. Support and bug fixes
    12. Tk version numbers

1. Introduction
---------------

This directory contains the sources and documentation for Tk, an X11
toolkit implemented with the Tcl scripting language.  The information
here corresponds to release 8.1b3, which is the third beta release
for Tk 8.1.  This release is mostly feature complete but may have bugs
and be missing some minor features.  This release is for early
adopters who are willing to help us find and fix problems.  Please let
us know about any problems you uncover.

The most important change in Tk 8.1 is that it supports the new
internationalization features in Tcl 8.1.  It also contains a new
library for handling configuration options some of the widgets have
been converted to use the Tcl object facilities.  For details on
features, incompatibilities, and potential problems with this release,
see the Tcl/Tk 8.1 Web page at

	http://www.scriptics.com/software/8.1.html

or refer to the "changes" file in this directory, which contains a
historical record of all changes to Tk.

Tk is a freely available open source package.  You can do virtually
anything you like with it, such as modifying it, redistributing it,
and selling it either in whole or in part.  See the file
"license.terms" for complete information.

2. Documentation
----------------

The best way to get started with Tk is to read about Tk on the
Scriptics Web site at:

	http://www.scriptics.com/scripting

Another good way to get started with Tcl is to read one of the
introductory books on Tcl:

    Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 2nd Edition, by Brent Welch,
    Prentice-Hall, 1997, ISBN 0-13-616830-2

    Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, by John Ousterhout,
    Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-63337-X

    Exploring Expect, by Don Libes,
    O'Reilly and Associates, 1995, ISBN 1-56592-090-2

Other books are listed at
http://www.scriptics.com/resource/doc/books/

There is also an official home for Tcl and Tk on the Scriptics Web site:

	http://www.scriptics.com

These Web pages include information about the latest releases, products
related to Tcl and Tk, reports on bug fixes and porting issues, HTML
versions of the manual pages, and pointers to many other Tcl/Tk Web
pages at other sites.  Check them out!

If you are porting Tk 3.6 scripts to Tk 4.0 or later releases, you may
find the Postscript file doc/tk4.0.ps useful.  It is a porting guide
that summarizes the new features and discusses how to deal with the
changes in Tk 4.0 that are not backwards compatible.

2a. Unix Documentation
----------------------

The "doc" subdirectory in this release contains a complete set of
reference manual entries for Tk.  Files with extension ".1" are for
programs such as wish; files with extension ".3" are for C library
procedures; and files with extension ".n" describe Tcl commands.  To
print any of the manual entries, cd to the "doc" directory and invoke
your favorite variant of troff using the normal -man macros, for example

		ditroff -man wish.1

to print wish.1.  If Tk has been installed correctly and your "man"
program supports it, you should be able to access the Tcl manual entries
using the normal "man" mechanisms, such as

		man wish

2b. Windows Documentation
-------------------------

The "doc/help" subdirectory in this release contains a complete set of
Windows help files for TclPro.  Once you install this Tcl release, a
shortcut to the Windows help Tcl documentation will appear in the
"Start" menu:

	Start | Programs | Tk | Tk Help

3. Compiling and installing Tk
------------------------------

This release contains everything you should need to compile and run
Tk under UNIX, PCs (either Windows NT, Windows 95, or Win 3.1 with
Win32s), and Macintoshes.

Before trying to compile Tk you should do the following things:

    (a) Check for a binary release.  Pre-compiled binary releases are
        available now for PCs, Macintoshes, and several flavors of UNIX.
        Binary releases are much easier to install than source releases.
        To find out whether a binary release is available for your
        platform, check the Scriptics Tcl Resource Center
        (http://www.scriptics.com/resource).  Also, check in
        the FTP directory from which you retrieved the base
        distribution.

    (b) Make sure you have the most recent patch release.  Look in the
	FTP directory from which you retrieved this distribution to see
	if it has been updated with patches.  Patch releases fix bugs
	without changing any features, so you should normally use the
	latest patch release for the version of Tk that you want. 

Once you've done this, change to the "unix" subdirectory if you're
compiling under UNIX, "win" if you're compiling under Windows, or
"mac" if you're compiling on a Macintosh.  Then follow the instructions
in the README file in that directory for compiling Tk, installing it,
and running the test suite.

4. Getting started
------------------

The best way to get started with Tk is by reading one of the
introductory books.  See the documentation section above for more
details.

The subdirectory library/demos contains a number of pre-canned scripts
that demonstrate various features of Tk.  See the README file in the
directory for a description of what's available.  The file
library/demos/widget is a script that you can use to invoke many
individual demonstrations of Tk's facilities, see the code that
produced the demos, and modify the code to try out alternatives.

5. Summary of changes in Tk 8.1
-------------------------------

6. Development tools
--------------------

A high quality set of commercial development tools is now available to
accelerate your Tk application development.  Scriptics' TclPro
product provides a debugger, static code checker, packaging utility,
and bytecode compiler.  Visit the Scriptics Web site at:

	http://www.scriptics.com/tclpro

for more information on TclPro and for a free 30-day evaluation
download.

7. Tcl newsgroup
----------------

There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the
exchange of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications.  The
newsgroup is a greata place to ask general information questions.  For
bug reports, please see the "Support and bug fixes" section below.

8. Tcl contributed archive
--------------------------

Many people have created exciting packages and applications based on Tcl
and/or Tk and made them freely available to the Tcl community.  An archive
of these contributions is kept on the machine ftp.neosoft.com.  You
can access the archive using anonymous FTP;  the Tcl contributed archive is
in the directory "/pub/tcl".  The archive also contains several FAQ
("frequently asked questions") documents that provide solutions to problems
that are commonly encountered by TCL newcomers.

9. Tcl Resource Center
----------------------

Visit http://www.scriptics.com/resource/ to see an annotated index of
many Tcl resources available on the World Wide Web.  This includes
papers, books, and FAQs, as well as development tools, extensions,
applications, binary releases, and patches.  You can also recommend
additional URLs for the resource center using the forms labeled "Add a
Resource".

10. Mailing lists
-----------------

A couple of  Mailing List have been set up to discuss Macintosh or
Windows related Tcl issues.  To subscribe send a message to:
	
	wintcl-request@tclconsortium.org
	mactcl-request@tclconsortium.org
	
In the body of the message (the subject will be ignored) put:
	
	subscribe mactcl Joe Smith
	
Replacing Joe Smith with your real name, of course.  (Use wintcl
instead of mactcl if your interested in the Windows list.)  If you
would just like to receive more information about the list without
subscribing put the line:

	information mactcl
	
in the body instead (or wintcl).

11. Support and bug fixes
-------------------------

Scriptics is very interested in receiving bug reports, patches, and
suggestions for improvements.  We prefer that you send this
information to us via the bug form on the Scriptics Web site, rather
than emailing us directly.  The bug form is at:

	http://www.scriptics.com/support/bugForm.html

The bug form was designed to give uniform structure to bug reports as
well as to solicit enough information to minimize followup questions.
The bug form also includes an option to automatically post your report
on comp.lang.tcl.  We strongly recommend that you select this option
because someone else who reads comp.lang.tcl may be able to offer a
solution.

When reporting bugs, please provide full information about the Tcl/Tk
version and the platform on which you are running Tcl/Tk.  Also,
please include a short wish script that we can use to reproduce the
bug.  Make sure that the script runs with a bare-bones wish and
doesn't depend on any extensions or other programs, particularly those
that exist only at your site.  Also, please include three additional
pieces of information with the script:

    (a) how do we use the script to make the problem happen (e.g.
	what things do we click on, in what order)?
    (b) what happens when you do these things (presumably this is
        undesirable)?
    (c) what did you expect to happen instead?

We will log and follow-up on each bug, although we cannot promise a
specific turn-around time.  Enhancements may take longer and may not
happen at all unless there is widespread support for them (we're
trying to slow the rate at which Tcl/Tk turns into a kitchen sink).
It's very difficult to make incompatible changes to Tcl/Tk at this
point, due to the size of the installed base.

The Tcl community is too large for us to provide much individual
support for users.  If you need help we suggest that you post
questions to comp.lang.tcl.  We read the newsgroup and will attempt to
answer esoteric questions for which no-one else is likely to know the
answer.  In addition, Tcl/Tk support and training are available
commercially from Scriptics at:

	http://www.scriptics.com/training

Also see the following Web site for links to other organizations that
offer Tcl/Tk training:

	http://www.scriptics.com/resource/commercial/training

12. Tk version numbers
----------------------

You can test the current version of Tk by examining the
tk_version and tk_patchLevel variables.  The tk_patchLevel
variable follows the naming rules outlined below (e.g., 8.0.5).
The tk_version just has the major.minor numbers in it (e.g., 8.0)

Each Tk release is identified by two numbers separated by a dot, e.g.
3.6 or 4.0.  If a new release contains changes that are likely to break
existing C code or Tcl scripts then the major release number increments
and the minor number resets to zero: 3.0, 4.0, etc.  If a new release
contains only bug fixes and compatible changes, then the minor number
increments without changing the major number, e.g. 4.1, 4.2, etc.  If
you have C code or Tcl scripts that work with release X.Y, then they
should also work with any release X.Z as long as Z > Y.

Alpha and beta releases have an additional suffix of the form a2 or
b1.  For example, Tk 4.0b1 is the first beta release of Tk version
4.0, Tk 4.0b2 is the second beta release, and so on.  A beta release
is an initial version of a new release, used to fix bugs and bad
features before declaring the release stable.  An alpha release is
like a beta release, except it's likely to need even more work before
it's "ready for prime time".  New releases are normally preceded by
one or more alpha and beta releases.  We hope that lots of people will
try out the alpha and beta releases and report problems.  We'll make
new alpha/beta releases to fix the problems, until eventually there is
a beta release that appears to be stable.  Once this occurs we'll make
the final release.

We can't promise to maintain compatibility among alpha and beta releases.
For example, release 4.1b2 may not be backward compatible with 4.1b1, even
though the final 4.1 release will be backward compatible with 4.0.  This
allows us to change new features as we find problems during beta testing.
We'll try to minimize incompatibilities between beta releases, but if
a major problem turns up then we'll fix it even if it introduces an
incompatibility.  Once the official release is made then there won't
be any more incompatibilities until the next release with a new major
version number.

(Note: This compatibility is true for Tcl scripts, but historically
the Tcl C APIs have changed enough between releases that you may need
to work a bit to upgrade extensions.)

Patch releases now have a suffix such as ".4" or ".5".  Prior to
version 8.0.3, patch releases had the suffix "p1" or "p2".  So, the
8.0 release went to 8.0p1, 8.0p2, 8.0.3, 8.0.4, and 8.0.5.  The alphas
and betas continue to use the 'a' and 'b' letters in their
tk_patchLevel.  Patch releases normally contain bug fixes only.  A
patch release (e.g Tk 8.0.5) should be completely compatible with the
base release from which it is derived (e.g. Tk 8.0), and you should
normally use the highest available patch release.

Note: with Tk 8.0 the Tk version number skipped from 4.2 to 8.0. The
jump was made in order to synchronize the Tcl and Tk version numbers.

13. Thank You
-------------

We'd like to express our thanks to the Tcl community for all the
helpful suggestions, bug reports, and patches we have received.
Tcl/Tk has improved vastly and will continue to do so with your help.