Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links (Aug 25)

QOTW:  "... think of it as operator underloading." - Steve Landers, agent
evocateur


    "Timeout" demands care, but it's feasible:
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_threa...

    BWidget:  dead weight or worthwhile?
	http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_threa...


Thanks to Arjen Markus for his mostly-weekly Wiki reports:
  As we near the end of August, the Google Summer of Code nears
  completion. At least one page on the Wiki describe the current
  status of a project. But plenty more is to be found!
  
  Graphics for dare-devils
  - Why not create your own geometry manager? All you really need is the
    canvas widget, some bindings and a few good ideas of what you want.
    See <http://wiki.tcl.tk/28658>
  
  - Raytracing is a pretty old technique for creating 3D pictures. Despite
    its age it is still very useful, and you do not always need many lines
    of code either, as <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10857> illustrates.
  
  - You take an old venerable format, like the X bitmap format, you create
    a little conversion script to go from a block of characters to that
    particular format and leave the rest to Tk. <http://wiki.tcl.tk/28668>
  
  - Selecting a rectangular block of text is very useful at times and though
    the text widget does not support it directly, it only needs a wee bit of
    persuasion! <http://wiki.tcl.tk/8406>
  
  - Integrating Tcl into netbeans has resulted in a cure little plugin. Here
    is how to get it and how to install it: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/28455>
  
  Extend your toolkit
  - Extracting documentation from the source? Here is a vast range of
    possibilities, select the one that suits you best!
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/13009>
  
  - Add a package to your starkit almost automatically with this small
    utility - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/20210>
  
  - You may want some eye candy when testing your program. tclunit does this
    and is available via Tcllib. Check <http://wiki.tcl.tk/5647> for details.
  
  Watch it - it is not that easy!
  - Programming a game may not look that difficult, but there are a few
    devils to watch out for that crop up in the details. On the other hand,
    why not simply enjoy playing it? <http://wiki.tcl.tk/957>
  
  - There is a trade-off between elegance and efficiency, as illustrated
    between the lines in this series of Fibonacci number generators:
    you can take the mathematical definition or you can use the analytical
    expression - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/13957>
  
  - So you think you know all there is to know about object-oriented
    programming?  Check out the debate in <http://wiki.tcl.tk/13398>.


Everything Tcl-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these
pages:
    The "Welcome to comp.lang.tcl" message by Andreas Kupries
        http://www.purl.org/net/tcl-welcome
    comp.lang.tcl is a crucial resource for Tcl practitioners.
    An interesting perspective on its traffic appears at
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/about

    The Tcl Developer Site is Tcl's "home base".
        http://www.tcl.tk

    Larry Virden maintains a comp.lang.tcl FAQ launcher.
        http://www.purl.org/NET/Tcl-FAQ/

    Tcl Developer Xchange sponsor, ActiveState, keeps info to 
    convince your boss Tcl is a good thing
        http://www.tcl.tk/scripting/

    The Tcl'ers Wiki is a huge, dynamic, collaboratively edited repository
    of documentation, examples, tutorials and pontifications on all things 
    Tcl.
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/0
    For the ideal overview of the topics about Tcl most likely to
    interest a newcomer, see "Arts and Crafts ..."
        http://wiki.tcl.tk/969
    There's also a high-quality Wikibook on Tcl:
        http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Tcl

    ActiveState maintains binaries distribution and development tools
        http://www.activestate.com/Tcl
    along with a Cookbook of Tcl recipes
        http://code.activestate.com/recipes/langs/tcl/

    "La Gazette du Técleux" is an important monthly publication.
        http://wfr.tcl.tk/1159

    deli.cio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary.
    It already aggregates quite a bit of Tcl intelligence.
        http://del.icio.us/tag/tcl

    Cameron Laird tracks several Tcl/Tk references of interest (but
    needs to validate many of the links).
        http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

    Years ago, Cetus Links maintained a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

    "Yahoo! Groups" archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts--even 
    though clta itself is dormant.
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

We're working on more useful archives of past installments.  Dave 
Williams generously is building up
    http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/comp/tclurl/index.htm
and of course Google gives us
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Tcl-URL&...

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.

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