path: root/README

The Tk Toolkit

RCS: @(#) $Id: README,v 1.1.4.2 1998/09/30 02:15:12 stanton Exp $

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

This directory and its descendants contain the sources and documentation
for Tk, an X11 toolkit implemented with the Tcl scripting language.  The
information here constitutes the 8.1a2 release, which is the second alpha
release for Tk 8.1.  This release is still in experimental form and is
intended for expert early adopters who are willing to help us find and
fix problems. The release is certain to contain bugs and is not yet
feature-complete: we will probably add new features or change some of
the existing features before the final 8.1 release.  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://sunscript.sun.com/TclTkCore/8.1.html or
refer to the "changes" file in this directory, which contains a
historical record of all changes to Tk.

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

The best way to get started with Tk is to read one of the introductory
books on Tcl and Tk:

    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/
http://www.tclconsortium.org/resources/books.html

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

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.

There is also an official home for Tcl and Tk on the Web:
	http://www.scriptics.com/
These Web pages include release updates, 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!

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

This release contains everything you should need to compile and run
Tk under UNIX, Macintoshes, and PCs (either Windows NT, Windows 95,
or Windows 98.)

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 and 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 home page for Tcl/Tk
        (http://www.scriptics.com/) and 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. 
	Patch releases are available in two forms.  A file like
	tk8.1p1.tar.Z is a complete release for patch level 1 of Tk
	version 8.1.  If there is a file with a higher patch level than
	this release, just fetch the file with the highest patch level
	and use it.

	Patches are also available in the form of patch files that just
	contain the changes from one patch level to another.  These
	files have names like tk8.1p1.patch, tk8.1p2.patch, etc.  They
	may also have .gz or .Z extensions to indicate compression.  To
	use one of these files, you apply it to an existing release with
	the "patch" program.  Patches must be applied in order:
	tk8.1p1.patch must be applied to an unpatched Tk 8.1 release
	to produce a Tk 8.1p1 release;  tk8.1p2.patch can then be
	applied to Tk 8.1p1 to produce Tk 8.1p2, and so on. To apply an
	uncompressed patch file such as tk8.1p1.patch, invoke a shell
	command like the following from the directory containing this
	file:
	    patch -p < tk8.1p1.patch
	If the patch file has a .gz extension, it was compressed with
	gzip.  To apply it, invoke a command like the following:
	    gunzip -c tk8.1p1.patch.gz | patch -p
	If the patch file has a .Z extension, it was compressed with
	compress.  To apply it, invoke a command like the following:
	    zcat tk8.1p1.patch.Z | patch -p
	If you're applying a patch to a release that has already been
	compiled, then before applying the patch you should cd to the
	"unix" subdirectory and type "make distclean" to restore the
	directory to a pristine state.

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.

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. Tcl/Tk newsgroup
-------------------

There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the exchange
of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications.  Feel free to use
this newsgroup both for general information questions and for bug reports.
We read the newsgroup and will attempt to fix bugs and problems reported
to it.

When using comp.lang.tcl, please be sure that your e-mail return address
is correctly set in your postings.  This allows people to respond directly
to you, rather than the entire newsgroup, for answers that are not of
general interest.  A bad e-mail return address may prevent you from
getting answers to your questions.  You may have to reconfigure your news
reading software to ensure that it is supplying valid e-mail addresses.

6. Mailing lists
----------------

A couple of  Mailing List have been set up to discuss Macintosh or
Windows related Tcl issues.  In order to use these Mailing Lists you
must have access to the internet. To subscribe send a message to:
	
	wintcl-request@tclconsorium.org
	or
	mactcl-request@tclconsorium.org
	
In the body of the message (the subject will be ignored) put:
	
	subscribe mactcl Joe Blow
	
Replacing Joe Blow 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 but the line:

	information mactcl
	
in the body instead (or wintcl).

8. Tcl/Tk 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.scritics.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 extensions, applications, binary
releases, and patches.  You can contribute patches by sending them
to <patches@scriptics.com>.  You can also recommend more URLs for the
resource center using the forms labeled "Add a Resource".
 
10. Support and bug fixes
------------------------

We're very interested in receiving bug reports and suggestions for
improvements.  We prefer that you send this information to the
comp.lang.tcl newsgroup rather than to any of us at Scriptics.  We'll see
anything on comp.lang.tcl, and in addition someone else who reads 
comp.lang.tcl may be able to offer a solution.  The normal turn-around
time for bugs is 3-6 weeks.  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 Tk turns into a kitchen sink).  It's
very difficult to make incompatible changes to Tcl at this point, due
to the size of the installed base.

When reporting bugs, please provide 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?

The Tcl/Tk 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 (info@scriptics.com), NeoSoft (info@neosoft.com),
Computerized Processes Unlimited (gwl@cpu.com),
and Data Kinetics (education@dkl.com).

11. Release organization
------------------------

The version numbers described below are available to Tcl scripts
as the tk_version and tk_patchLevel Tcl variables.

Each Tk release is identified by two numbers separated by a dot, e.g.
3.2 or 3.3.  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. 3.1, 3.2, 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 3.3b1 is the first beta release of Tk version 3.3,
Tk 3.3b2 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.

Patch releases used to have a suffix such as p1 or p2.  Now we use
a 3-part version number: major.minor.patchlevel. (e.g., 8.0.3)
These releases contain bug fixes only.  A patch release (e.g Tk 4.1p2)
should be completely compatible with the base release from which it is
derived (e.g. Tk 4.1), and you should normally use the highest available
patch release.