Tcl your desktop (IBM) [LWN.net]

William B. Zimmerly explores Tcl/Tk in an IBM article. "Originating with Dr. John Ousterhout of the University of California, Berkeley, and later of Sun Microsystems and Scriptics, the Tool Command Language and Tk GUI toolkit (Tcl/Tk) scripting language offers a simple and elegant way to code GUI widgets with minimal effort. Programming a computer to do something always involves at least two important issues: how it will look and how it will work. The Tcl/Tk programming language strives to makes it as painless as possible to deal with the how will it look issue; it lets you easily script GUI widgets, such as windows and buttons, and attach them to procedures (the how will it work issue)."

to post comments

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 8, 2006 22:04 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (6 responses)

I guess this is a typo...

A successful option to meet both needs is a minimalist window manager that runs on top of a powerful window manager, allowing you just enough flexibility to script with ease.

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 9, 2006 5:13 UTC (Fri) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (5 responses)

I think it's more of a "think-o", if you will, since neither TCL nor Tk are window managers, nor
related to such.

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 9, 2006 6:50 UTC (Fri) by davidw (guest, #947) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, window managers have been written in Tcl/Tk - tkdesktop, I think, was the name.

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 9, 2006 20:56 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (1 responses)

TkDesk is definitely not a window manager. It's more of a lightweight "desktop environment" designed to run on top of your window manager (rather than underneath it like most newer DEs). It goes well with some of the minimalist window managers--I used to run it with fvwm.

Some people say that Tk is ugly, but I think that simple and stark has its own sort of beauty.

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 10, 2006 9:16 UTC (Sat) by macc (guest, #510) [Link]

The uglyness thing will be addressed with Tile
a themed widget-set that aimes at native look
on all platforms:

Tile:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/11075
Tile usage, migration, looks:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/2?Tile

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 9, 2006 9:36 UTC (Fri) by macc (guest, #510) [Link] (1 responses)

tcl/tk has all the functionality needed for
a (scripted) window manager.

see:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/13972

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

Posted Jun 9, 2006 14:15 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

That's interesting, thanks for the link. I check out the list at http://xwinman.org/others.php now and then, but I haven't seen this one before.