Conference 7.286::digital

  I too would be interested in hearing about this. For selfish reasons: I used
VMS for 9 years before learning Unix in 1992, and I still prefer VMS.

   I've gotten tcl and tk to compile and run on OpenVMS (VAX and Alpha),
   even fixed a nasty bug or two... I'm sure someone else has done this
   in the corporation (if not, why not ;-), but I'll offer what I have.

   Normally, I'd point you to my note in SICVAX::GUI_TOOLS, but that node
   doesn't seem reachable right now.

   This is a port of Tcl7.4 and Tk4.0, which is quite recent.
   I have tcl7.3/tk3.6 too, if you need older versions.

   When you unpack the archive, you will need to make a few minor edits
   to the makefile.vms (MMS description file) for your particular system
   e.g. VAX vs ALPHA macro, directory names, etc.

   I can't offer formal support (please don't call me), but nice emails
   and promises of chocolate are welcome. Most stuff works, but of course
   any commands in scripts that invoke Unix shell commands won't work.

   Remember to define TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY logicals in "Unix-style"
   format, e.g.

   $ define TCL_LIBRARY "/tcad$/faricelli/tcl74/library"

   Sometimes tcl or tk barfs if this logical has an embedded "$" in part
   of the path, if so, use another logical to hide it (this happens mostly
   for disk names).

   Please copy after hours. Have fun, tcl and tk are GRRRRRRRRREAT!

   -- John Faricelli

$ dir/size/date/prot subpac::tcad$:[faricelli.public.tcl]

Directory TCAD$:[FARICELLI.PUBLIC.TCL]

TCL74TK40.A;1          17703  27-SEP-1995 10:27:51.35  (RWED,RWED,RE,R)

John,

Many thanks for your reply - I'll give it a whirl.

I think Tcl is great, too.

Norman

>I think Tcl is great, too.

me too, from what I've seen of it... anybody know where I can get my hands
on an `idiot's guide' to tcl/tk?

Chris.

  There's a "Nutshell" (O'Reilly Asscoiates) book out on tcl/expect,
  but I don't think it provides deep coverage of tcl, per se.

  Take a look at their web site (http://www.ora.com/) for details.

                                   Atlant

    Buy the real book, published by the author himself.

  Here are two references:

  "Tcl and the Tk Toolkit", John Ousterhout, Addison-Wesley
  More of a reference book than a tutorial, but some examples.

  "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk", Brent Welch, Prentice Hall
  More programming examples than Ousterhout's book, example diskette
  included.

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

  I was in quite a hurry when I wrote my initial reply, so I neglected
  to state that the port to VMS was done by Angel Li of the University
  of Miami. I copied his port off the Internet, fixed a few more
  bugs and created an MMS description file.

  Also note that tcl/tk has been ported to Microsoft Windows and MacOS,
  although I have not tried either. I suspect they are still rough around
  the edges. It does make tcl/tk even more interesting.

  -- John Faricelli

    I'd been packaging an older port of tcl7.3 and tk3.6 for a project in
    OpenVMS; will check on the later versions mentioned in .2 as an
    alternative.  Glad to hear about port of later version, in part
    because there were miscellaneous build problems with the older version,
    it seems (based on checking by another person in the group, Hans Wald)
    because of incremental changes to get the code to build on various
    platforms.  

    Below is some information I'd found back in the early summer, at least
    some of which was introductory.  Did a quick check, these are still
    reachable.  You can follow the pointers to many more.

    ftp: 
    ----
    Draft of Brent Welch book mentioned in ;-1.  May be other updates
    in that directory.

    parcftp.xerox.com, anonymous, /pub/sprite/tkbook.ps.Z  (also .gz)

    WWW:
    ---
    http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~wade/Auto/Tcl.html
    Tcl/Tk Resources                                

    http://http2.brunel.ac.uk:8080/~csstddm/TCL2/TCL2.html
    A brief introduction to TCL/TK

    Yahoo - Computers:Languages:Tcl/Tk -- from search I'd done, many useful
    pointers:
    
    http://www.yahoo.com/Computers/Languages/Tcl_Tk/

    Angel Li, who did the original work on the ports mentioned in previous
    notes, sent update about latest kit (tcl7.5/tk4.1).  I copied the kit
    (anonymous ftp to mango.rsmas.miami.edu, /pub/VMS-tcl/tcl7.5-tk4.1)
    and will post results of build here. If anyone else tries this out,
    any feedback appreciated (especially on actual use).
    
    Sheldon

    -------
    
    Attached are Angel Li's notes for the kit (text version saved from
    his .html file).  Notes:
        - ftp connect is  at [email protected].
        - ftp get command required directory in quotes, e.g. get "tcl-src.tgz"
        - pmake*.tgz files mentioned below are in the VMS-tcl directory,
            tcl-src.tgz and tk-src in tcl7.5-tk4.1 subdirectory
    
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    
Tcl7.5a2 and Tk4.1a2 on VMS

[email protected] 

Introduction

A port of Tcl7.5a2 and Tk4.1a2 is now available for VMS on both Alphas
and Vaxes. Shareable images of the Tcl and Tk libraries are built by default
and tclsh and wish both link against them. Included in this port is an
implementation of the new Tcl command load, the command used to
dynamically load extensions. The BLT library is included and built as a
loadable module. Minimal testing was done on this port of Tcl. The widget
demo runs as does a medium-sized real-time data display application
written locally.
                                                                
Tcl7.5/Tk4.1 is the first release that runs on Unix, MacOS and Windows.
The VMS port made some minor patches to the core source. Some of these
patches will not be needed in some upcoming release of Tcl/Tk. The core
files need not be patched if the modified files are separately maintained. It is
hoped that John Ousterhout will integrate the patches into the official
release.

How to Get It

Using anonymous FTP, connect to mango.rsmas.miami.edu and cd to the
directory /pub/VMS-tcl/tcl7.5-tk4.1. The files tcl.diffs and tk.diffs are the
patch files that need to be applied to a stock Tcl7.5a2 and Tk4.1a2 source
directory. The file tcl-vms.tgz, a tar file compressed by GNU zip, contains
the files that implement the VMS specific code for Tcl. The file tk-vms.tgz,
a tar file compressed by GNU zip, contains the files that implement the
VMS specific code for TK. Both of the tar files should be unpacked in the
top-level source directory for both Tcl7.5a2 and Tk4.1a2.

A complete source distribution is also available. Get the files tcl-src.tgz and 
tk-src.tgz. The VMS-specific files are included in the latter two files.

Building From Sources

To build the release from sources, you'll have to get my port of the BSD
pmake program available in mango.rsmas.miami.edu. The file 
pmake-alpha.tgz is the Alpha version and pmake-vax.tgz is the Vax
version. Sorry about using this version of make but that is what I use daily
on both Unix and VMS. If someone converts makefile.vms to an MMS
makefile, I'll include it in the distribution and try to keep it up to date.

Note that the DEC C compiler was used to build this release not the VAX C
or GNU C compiler. The include files are all different for each compiler and
it was a major pain in the butt to maintain. If you don't have this compiler I
hope the binary release is sufficiently useful. 

Binary-only Files

Binary-only distributions are also available. Included are only the
executables for tclsh and wish, the Tcl and Tk libraries in .olb and shareable
images format, the Tcl/Tk library files and a command procedure that
defines the needed logical names and symbols to use Tcl/Tk on VMS. For
the Alpha binary-only distribution, fetch the file alpha-bin.tgz. Fetch 
vax-bin.tgz for the Vax version. Create a new directory and extract the files
from the compressed tar file. Edit the file [.com]tcl-tk-setup.com and run
that command procedure to define all needed logical names. 

Running

The logical names TCLSHR and TKSHR need to point to the location
where tclshr.exe and tkshr.exe are stored. The logical names 
TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY need to point to the Tcl and Tk
run-time library files. The value of these logical names need to be specified
in Unix syntax, i. e. /dev/dir/tcl75/library. They are specified in
this format to minimize the number of changes to the core files. 

Bugs

I'm very interested in hearing about bugs in this port. Unfortunately, I lost
some mail files with bug reports from previous ports. Please mail me again if
those bugs are persistent. 
    
    

See also,
	
	NSL Tecnical Note TN-14
	Using Tcl to Process HTML Forms
	Glen Trewitt
	Digital Network Systems Laboratory

Orderable from [email protected]
http://www.research.digital.com/nsl/home.html


Bruce

                   LAUNCH INTO THE INTERNET WITH OpenVMS

                ANNOUNCING THE OpenVMS INTERNET PRODUCT SUITE
  
-  Clients, including Netscape Navigator; Spyglass Enhanced Mosaic;
   lynx, a text-based WWW browser (freeware); and mxrn, a Motif
   News reader (freeware)

-  Servers, including the Netscape Communications Server and Purveyor
   Server for high performance Internet transactions; the Netscape Commerce
   Server for secure Internet transactions; IUPOP3 mail server (freeware);
   a gopher server (freeware); and the ANU-NEWS server (freeware)

-  Firewall -- the Digital Firewall for OpenVMS (formerly known as
   SEAL)

-  Server applications, including a Web interface to VTX

-  Tools and Utilities ported to OpenVMS, including tcl, pearl,
   bison (a parser generator), grep, fgrep, gawk, flex, and sed

-  HTML tools for checking HTML syntax, removing HTML markup,
   converting text to HTML, converting HTML to PostScript, searching
   and replacing in an HTML file, and converting SDML to HTML

The OpenVMS Internet Product Suite V1.0 CD, which requires OpenVMS
V6.1 and DECwindows Motif V1.2-3 or later, will be available in early
1996.  

In the mean time we have made TCL and TK kits available on BULOVA, in 
directories:

public2$:[tcl7_5a2...]
public2$:[tk4_1a2...]

In each top level directory are files freeware_readme.txt and
freeware_install_Readme.txt (the latter is same as pdfinfo.txt,
gives information for those who want to install the pre-built images
and not do build).  For now, the [.alpha] subdirectories are empty.

Iris Realmuto
OpenVMS Internet Ready Project Leader

By popular demand, we have made some other kits available.

All directories are on BULOVA:: [fgrep], [grep], [gawk-2_15_6],
[perl5], [sed-2-05], [osu_http].  Most are set up with [.alpha] and 
[.vax] subdirectories for the executables; temporarily for sed, the 
executables are both at the top level as sed.exe_alpha and sed.exe_vax.
 
If you are interested in learning more about the OpenVMS Internet CD 
and base system projects, I invite you to visit our home page under 

        http://kaler.zko.dec.com/nt

Iris Realmuto
OpenVMS Internet Ready Project Leader