Tcl/Tk 8.0 for Windows, Binary Distribution


@(#) README.binary 1.9 97/08/13 18:52:04



1. Introduction

--------------- 



This directory contains the binary distribution of Tcl/Tk 8.0 for

Windows.  It was compiled with Borland C++ 4.52 using Win32 API, so

that it will run under Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 3.1 (with

Win32s).  The information here corresponds to release 8.0.  Tcl 8.0 is

a major new release that replaces the core of the interpreter with an

on-the-fly bytecode compiler to improve execution speed.  It also

includes several other new features such as namespaces and binary I/O,

plus many bug fixes.  The compiler introduces several

incompatibilities that may affect existing Tcl scripts; the

incompatibilities are relatively obscure but may require modifications

to some old scripts before they can run with this version. The

compiler introduces many new C-level APIs, but the old APIs are still

supported.  See below for more details.



This release also corresponds to Tk 8.0.  This is a major release with

significant new features such as native look and feel on Macintoshes

and PCs, a new font mechanism, application embedding, and proper

support for Safe-Tcl.  See below for details.  There should be no

backward incompatibilities in Tk 8.0 that affect scripts.



Note: with this release the Tk version number skips from 4.2 to 8.0.

The jump was made in order to synchronize the Tcl and Tk version

numbers.



2. Documentation

----------------



The best way to get started with Tcl is to read one of the introductory

books on Tcl:



    Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, by John Ousterhout,

    Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-63337-X



    Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, by Brent Welch,

    Prentice-Hall, 1995, ISBN 0-13-182007-9



    Exploring Expect, by Don Libes,

    O'Reilly and Associates, 1995, ISBN 1-56592-090-2



The "doc" subdirectory in this release contains a complete set of

reference manual entries in Windows help format. 



The "lib/tk8.0/demos" directory contains a number of pre-canned

scripts that demonstrate various features of Tk.  The file

"lib/tk8.0/demos/widget.tcl" is a script that you can use to invoke

many individual demonstrations of Tk's facilities.



Additional information is available in the source release or from the

Tcl/Tk home page on the Web:



	http://sunscript.sun.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. Installation

---------------



The binary release is distributed as a self-extracting archive called

tcl80.exe.  The setup program which will prompt you for an

installation directory.  It will create the installation heirarchy

under the specified directory, and install a wish application icon

under the program manager group of your choice.



In order to run Tcl/Tk under Windows 3.1, you will need to install the

latest release of Win32s first.  The Win32s distribution can be found

in the same location as the Tcl/Tk binary and source distributions.

The 1.30 release of Win32s is available along with the binary and

source distributions.  Look for a file called w32s130.exe. Win32s is

not needed to run under Windows '95 or Windows NT.



4. Summary of changes in Tcl 8.0

--------------------------------



Here are the most significant changes in Tcl 8.0.  In addition to these

changes, there are several smaller changes and bug fixes.  See the file

"changes" for a complete list of all changes.



    1. Bytecode compiler.  The core of the Tcl interpreter has been

    replaced with an on-the-fly compiler that translates Tcl scripts to

    byte codes; a new interpreter then executes the byte codes. In

    earlier versions of Tcl, strings were used as a universal

    representation;  in Tcl 8.0 strings are replaced with Tcl_Obj

    structures ("objects") that can hold both a string value and an

    internal form such as a binary integer or compiled bytecodes.  The

    new objects make it possible to store information in efficient

    internal forms and avoid the constant translations to and from

    strings that occurred with the old interpreter.  We have not yet

    converted all of Tcl to take full advantage of the compiler and

    objects and have not converted any of Tk yet, but even so you

    should see speedups of 2-3x on many programs and you may see

    speedups as much as 10-20x in some cases (such as code that

    manipulates long lists).  Future releases should achieve even

    greater speedups.  The compiler introduces only a few minor changes

    at the level of Tcl scripts, but it introduces many new C APIs for

    managing objects.  See, for example, the manual entries doc/*Obj*.3.



    2. Namespaces.  There is a new namespace mechanism based on the

    namespace implementation by Michael McLennan of Lucent Technologies.

    This includes new "namespace" and "variable" commands.  There are

    many new C APIs associated with namespaces, but they will not be

    exported until Tcl 8.1.  Note: the syntax of the namespace command

    has been changed slightly since the b1 release.  See the changes

    file for details.



    3. Binary I/O.  The new object system in Tcl 8.0 supports binary

    strings (internally, strings are counted in addition to being null

    terminated).  There is a new "binary" command for inserting and

    extracting data to/from binary strings.  Commands such as "puts",

    "gets", and "read" commands now operate correctly on binary data. 

    There is a new variable tcl_platform(byteOrder) to identify the

    native byte order for the current host.



    4. Random numbers.  The "expr" command now contains a random number

    generator, which can be accessed via the "rand()" and "srand()" math

    functions.



    5. Safe-Tcl enhancements.  There is a new "hidden command"

    mechanism, implemented with the Tcl commands "interp hide", "interp

    expose", "interp invokehidden", and "interp hidden" and the C APIs

    Tcl_HideCommand and Tcl_ExposeCommand.  There is now support for

    loadable security policies, including new library procedures such as

    tcl_safeCreateInterp.



    6. There is a new package "registry" available under Windows for

    accessing the Windows registry.



    7. There is a new command "file attributes" for getting and setting

    things like permissions and owner.  There is also a new command

    "file nativename" for getting back the platform-specific name for a

    particular file.



    8. There is a new "fcopy" command to copy data between channels. 

    This replaces and improves upon the not-so-secret unsupported old

    command "unsupported0".



    9. There is a new package "http" for doing GET, POST, and HEAD

    requests via the HTTP/1.0 protocol.  See the manual entry http.n

    for details.



    10. There are new library procedures for finding word breaks in

    strings.  See the manual entry library.n for details.



    11. There are new C APIs Tcl_Finalize (for cleaning up before

    unloading the Tcl DLL) and Tcl_Ungets for pushing bytes back into a

    channel's input buffer.



    12. Tcl now supports serial I/O devices on Windows and Unix, with a

    new fconfigure -mode option.  The Windows driver does not yet

    support event-driven I/O.



    13. The lsort command has new options -dictionary and -index.  The

    -index option allows for very rapid sorting based on an element

    of a list.



    14. The event notifier has been completely rewritten (again).  It

    should now allow Tcl to use an external event loop (like Motif's)

    when it is embedded in other applications.  No script-level

    interfaces have changed, but many of the C APIs have.



Tcl 8.0 introduces the following incompatibilities that may affect Tcl

scripts that worked under Tcl 7.6 and earlier releases:



    1. Variable and command names may not include the character sequence

    "::" anymore: this sequence is now used as a namespace separator.



    2. The semantics of some Tcl commands have been changed slightly to

    maximize performance under the compiler.  These incompatibilities

    are documented on the Web so that we can keep the list up-to-date.

    See the URL http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/compiler.html.



    3. 2-digit years are now parsed differently by the "clock" command

    to handle year 2000 issues better (years 00-38 are treated as

    2000-2038 instead of 1900-1938).



    4. The old Macintosh commands "cp", "mkdir", "mv", "rm", and "rmdir"

    are no longer supported; all of these features are now available on

    all platforms via the "file" command.



    5. The variable tcl_precision is now shared between interpreters

    and defaults to 12 digits instead of 6; safe interpreters cannot

    modify tcl_precision.  The new object system in Tcl 8.0 causes

    floating-to-string conversions (and the associated rounding) to

    occur much less often than in Tcl 7.6, which can sometimes cause

    behavioral changes.



    6. The C APIs associated with the notifier have changed substantially.



    7. The procedures Tcl_CreateModalTimeout and Tcl_DeleteModalTimeout

    have been removed.



    8. Tcl_CreateFileHandler and Tcl_DeleteFileHandler now take Unix

    fd's and are only supported on the Unix platform.  Please use the

    Tcl_CreateChannelHandler interface instead.



    9. The C APIs for creating channel drivers have changed as part of

    the new notifier implementation.  The Tcl_File interfaces have been

    removed.  Tcl_GetChannelFile has been replaced with

    Tcl_GetChannelHandle.  Tcl_MakeFileChannel now takes a platform-

    specific file handle.  Tcl_DriverGetOptionProc procedures now take

    an additional interp argument.



5. Summary of changes in Tk 8.0

-------------------------------



Here is a list of the most important new features in Tk 8.0.  The

release also includes several smaller feature changes and bug fixes. 

See the "changes" file for a complete list of all changes.



    1. Native look and feel.  The widgets have been rewritten to provide

    (nearly?) native look and feel on the Macintosh and PC.  Many

    widgets, including scrollbars, menus, and the button family, are

    implemented with native platform widgets.  Others, such as entries

    and texts, have been modified to emulate native look and feel. 

    These changes are backwards compatible except that (a) some

    configuration options are now ignored on some platforms and (b) you

    must use the new menu mechanism described below to native look and

    feel for menus.



    2. There is a new interface for creating menus, where a menubar is

    implemented as a menu widget instead of a frame containing menubuttons.

    The -menu option for a toplevel is used to specify the name of the

    menubar; the menu will be displayed *outside* the toplevel using

    different mechanisms on each platform (e.g. on the Macintosh the menu

    will appear at the top of the screen).  See the menu demos in the

    widget demo for examples.  The old style of menu still works, but

    does not provide native look and feel.  Menus have several new

    features:

        - New "-columnbreak" and "-hideMargin" options make it possible

	  to create multi-column menus.

	- It is now possible to manipulate the Apple and Help menus on

	  the Macintosh, and the system menu on Windows.  It is also

	  possible to have a right justified Help menu on Unix.

	- Menus now issue the virtual event <<MenuSelect>> whenever the

	  current item changes.  Applications can use this to generate

	  help messages.

        - There is a new "-direction" option for menubuttons, which

	  controls where the menu pops up revenues to the button.



    3. The font mechanism in Tk has been completely reworked:

	- Font names need not be nasty X LFDs: more intuitive names

	  like {Times 12 Bold} can also be used.  See the manual entry

	  font.n for details.

	- Font requests always succeed now.  If the requested font is

	  not available, Tk finds the closest available font and uses

	  that one.

	- Tk now supports named fonts whose precise attributes can be

	  changed dynamically.  If a named font is changed, any widget

	  using that font updates itself to reflect the change.

	- There is a new command "font" for creating named fonts and

	  querying various information about fonts.

	- There are now officially supported C APIs for measuring and

	  displaying text.  If you use these APIs now, your code will

	  automatically handle international text when internationalization

	  is added to Tk in a future release.  See the manual entries

	  MeasureChar.3, TextLayout.3, and FontId.3.

	- The old C procedures Tk_GetFontStruct, Tk_NameOfFontStruct,

	  and Tk_FreeFontStruct have been replaced with more portable

	  procedures Tk_GetFont, Tk_NameOfFont, and Tk_FreeFont.



    4. Application embedding.  It is now possible to embedded one Tcl/Tk

    application inside another, using the -container option on frame

    widgets and the -use option for toplevel widgets or on the command

    line for wish.  Embedding should be fully functional under Unix,

    but the implementation is incomplete on the Macintosh and PC.



    5. Tk now works correctly with Safe-Tcl: it can be loaded into

    safe interpreters.



    6. Text widgets now allow images to be embedded directly in the

    text without using embedded windows.  This is more efficient and

    provides smoother scrolling.



    7. Buttons have a new -default option for drawing default rings in

    a platform-specific manner.



    8. There is a new "gray75" bitmap, and the "gray25" bitmap is now

    really 25% on (due to an ancient mistake, it had been only 12% on).

    The Macintosh now supports native bitmaps, including new builtin

    bitmaps "stop", "caution", and "note", plus the ability to use

    bitmaps in the application's resource fork.



    9. The "destroy" command now ignores windows that don't exist

    instead of generating an error.



Tk 8.0 introduces the following incompatibilities that may affect Tcl/Tk

scripts that worked under Tk 4.2 and earlier releases:



    1. Font specifications such as "Times 12" now interpret the size

    as points, whereas it used to be pixels (this was actually a bug,

    since the behavior was documented as points).  To get pixels now,

    use a negative size such as "Times -12".



    2. The -transient option for menus is no longer supported.  You can

    achieve the same effect with the -type field.



    3. In the canvas "coords" command, polygons now return only the

    points that were explicitly specified when the polygon was created

    (they used to return an extra point if the polygon wasn't originally

    closed).  Internally, polygons are still closed automatically for

    purposes of display and hit detection; the extra point just isn't

    returned by the "coords" command.



    4. The photo image mechanism now uses Tcl_Channels instead of FILEs,

   in order to make it portable.  FILEs are no longer used anywhere

   in Tk.



    5. The procedures Tk_GetFontStruct, Tk_NameOfFontStruct,

    and Tk_FreeFontStruct have been removed.



Note: the new compiler in Tcl 8.0 may also affect Tcl/Tk scripts; check

the Tcl documentation for information on incompatibilities introduced by

Tcl 8.0.



6. Known Bugs/Missing Features

------------------------------



- Solstice NFS interacts badly with Tcl, files linger after close

- Sockets have been known to hang during high load.  There are still

  some unresolved problems in the socket code where close events may

  get lost.

- Blocking "after" commands (e.g. "after 3000") don't work on Win32s.

- Clock command fails to handle daylight savings time boundaries for

  things like "last week".

- Background processes aren't properly detached on NT.

- File events only work on sockets.

- Pipes/files/console/serial ports don't support nonblocking I/O.

- The library cannot be used by two processes at the same time under

  Win32s.

- There is no support for custom cursors/application icons.  The core

  set of X cursors is supported, although you cannot change their color.

- Stippling of arcs isn't implemented yet.

- Some "wm" functions don't map to Windows and aren't implemented;

  others should map, but just aren't implemented.  The worst offenders

  are the icon manipulation routines.

- Under Win32s, you can only start one instance of Wish at a time.

- Color management on some displays doesn't work properly resulting in

  Tk switching to monochrome mode.

- Tk seems to fail to draw anything on some Matrox Millenium cards.

- Send and winfo interps are not currently supported

- Printing does not work for images (e.g. GIF) on a canvas.

- Tk_dialog appears in the upper left corner.  This is a symptom of a

  larger problem with "wm geometry" when applied to unmapped or

  iconified windows.

- Some keys don't work on international keyboards.

- Grabs do not affect native menus or the title bar.

- PPM images are using the wrong translation mode for writing to

  files, resulting in CR/LF terminated PPM files.

- Tk crashes if the display depth changes while it is running.  Tk

  also doesn't consistently track changes in the system colors.



There may be more that we don't know about, so be sure to submit bug

reports when you run into problems.  If you have comments or bug

reports for the Windows version of Tcl, please direct them to:



Scott Stanton

scott.stanton@eng.sun.com



or post them to the newsgroup comp.lang.tcl.



7. Tcl 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

the 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.



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. 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.  If you have access to the WWW the

home pages for these mailing lists are located at the following URLs:



	http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/lists/mactcl-list.html



		-and-



	http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/lists/wintcl-list.html



The home pages contain information about the lists and an HTML archive

of all the past messages on the list.  To subscribe send a message to:

	

	listserv@sunlabs.sun.com

	

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 put the line:



	information mactcl

	

in the body instead (or wintcl).



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 Sun.  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 2-4 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 Tcl 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 tclsh script that we can

use to reproduce the bug.  Make sure that the script runs with a

bare-bones tclsh 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 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 support and training are available commercially from

NeoSoft (info@neosoft.com), Computerized Processes Unlimited

(gwl@cpu.com), and Data Kinetics (education@dkl.com).



11. Tcl version numbers

----------------------



Each Tcl release is identified by two numbers separated by a dot, e.g.

6.7 or 7.0.  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: 6.0, 7.0, etc.  If a new release

contains only bug fixes and compatible changes, then the minor number

increments without changing the major number, e.g. 7.1, 7.2, 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 b1 or b1.

For example, Tcl 7.0b1 is the first beta release of Tcl version 7.0,

Tcl 7.0b2 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 7.1b2 may not be backward compatible with 7.1b1, even

though the final 7.1 release will be backward compatible with 7.0.  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 have a suffix such as p1 or p2.  These releases contain

bug fixes only.  A patch release (e.g Tcl 7.6p2) should be completely

compatible with the base release from which it is derived (e.g. Tcl

7.6), and you should normally use the highest available patch release.



12. Linking against the binary release

--------------------------------------



In order to link your applications against the .dll files shipped with

this release, you will need to use the appropriate .lib file for your

compiler.  In the lib directory of the installation directory, there

are library files for Borland and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers:



    For Borland, use:

	tcl80.lib

	tk80.lib



    For MSVC, use:

	tcl80vc.lib

	tk80vc.lib



13. Building dynamically loadable extensions

--------------------------------------------



Please refer to the example dynamically loadable extension provided on

our ftp site:



	ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/example.zip



This archive contains a template that you can use for building

extensions that will be loadable on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh

systems.

