Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

QOTW: "I wouldn't say 'kludgy', I'd say 'powerful'. And with great power
comes great responsibility :-)" -- Bryan Oakley

"I doubt there will ever be a Tcl plug-in for Explorer, but if Microsoft
feels sufficiently threatenned, I'm sure they will release a Visual Mcl
with none of the power of Tcl and all of the insecurity of Basic." -- SM Ryan

"This situation reminds me of my Red Cross first aid training of many
moons ago. The instructor taught that if you're surrounded by onlookers
and need help, don't say 'Hey, somebody call an ambulance' because
everyone is hoping or expecting someone else will do it. Instead, point
a finger directly at someone, look them in the eye and say 'You! You
call an ambulance!'.

I think we've been crying 'Somebody call an ambulance' for quite some
time now." -- Bryan Oakley, on OOTcl and related tangles.


POTW: Iocpsock v2.0.1 by David Gravereaux.  "The fastest sockets in the west
now has fewer bugs."  "This is my super fast sockets channel driver for use
with WinNT/ 2K/XP that uses the highest performance I/O model available on
the windows NT OSes."
    http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/iocpsock/iocpsock-2.0.1.zip?download


     An interesting idiom for making cut/copy/paste menu items
     that work on the current entry:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b53bd2fcbd2e5730

     Cascade menus must be children of the menu containing
     them, in order for things to work properly:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=93f1561eb95c8552

     Every "B" field of [binary scan] begins on a byte boundary:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a34737c2ee60aa8

     A particularly clear explanation of why you should never use
     list commands on arbitrary strings:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6beac2a12c2361d6

Thanks to Arjen Markus for his summary of Wiki activity:
  Games, graphics and useful little tools ... the usual mixture 
  of whimsey and gravity ...
  
  Games to be played ...
  - Find the bombs, an old page that has surfaced again:
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/2601>
  
  - Spiders may not be bugs to any biologist, but just ignore
    them and play this version of Solitaire ... <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11317>
  
  - Who has not played it as a kid? Tangram in less than a page of
    code - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11380>
  
  Procs to be manipulated and contemplated upon ...
  - Building procs from lego-like building blocks - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11382>
  
  - Registering the performance of procs - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11390>
  
  - Taking yet another step w.r.t. introspection - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11385>
    discusses accessor functions.
  
  Pictures to be made ...
  - Control "the Gimp" by thinking in building blocks - 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11393>
  
  - Use some elementary number theory, go to a boring conference and come
    up with a new way to draw a spiral ... a fellow called Stanislaw Ulam
    did so and thanks to Gerard Sookahet, we can see the result on the Wiki.
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11363> if you love numbers.
  
  Techniques to be used ...
  - Encodings can be trouble, if you do not have them rightaway. Here is
    a way to load them on the fly - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/10382>
  
  - Avoid repetitive code and get a bunch of those values in one go:
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11378> shows a nice little C function to do
    this.
  
  - Numerous encryption methods made available via a little wrapper
    - <http://wiki.tcl.tk/8478>
  
  - Some people complain about Tcl's syntax being at odds with ordinary 
    maths, well here is another shot at the problem: 
    <http://wiki.tcl.tk/11379>


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

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

    The Eleventh Mostly-Annual Tcl Conference will be this October.
	http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2004/

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

    The Tcl Developer Xchange is a highly organized resource center
    of documents and software with provisions for individuals to
    maintain references to their own software:
        http://www.tcl.tk/resource/
    The TDX sponsor, ActiveState, also 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

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

    Cameron Laird tracks several Tcl/Tk references of interest
        http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.tcl/

    Cetus Links maintains a Tcl/Tk page with verified links
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_tcl_tk.html

    Google Groups archives comp.lang.tcl.announce posts
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tcl_announce/

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/
An alternative is
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Tcl-URL&as_ugroup=comp.lang.tcl

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

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