2202H-5 The Tcl/Tk best-seller, now completely updated for Tcl 8.2 and the Tcl Web Server! Tcl/Tk 8.2 is the first scripting language that can handle enterprise-wide integration tasks that encompass Windows, Solaris, Macintosh, and other key platforms. Now, in this fully updated Third Edition, Tcl/Tk development team member and best-selling author Brent Welch presents all you need to know to achieve powerful results with Tcl/Tk 8.2 and the new Tcl Web Server. Coverage includes: *Tcl's fundamental mechanisms and operating system interfaces *Basic and advanced coding techniques and tools, including the Tcl script library facility *Tk and X Windows-with detailed examples and sample widgets *The new, extensible Tcl Web Server *New Tcl internationalization features and thread support *New techniques for working with regular expressions and namespaces You'll find extensive coverage of user interface development, as well as application integration techniques that leverage Tcl/Tk's powerful cross-platform scripting capabilities.Welch covers Tcl's extensive network support, as well as Safe Tcl, C programming with the Tk toolkit, the Tcl compiler, and Tcl/Tk plug-ins for Netscape and Internet Explorer. Whether you're a current Tcl/Tk programmer, or a developer searching for a convenient, powerful multiplatform scripting language, Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, Third Edition delivers exactly what you're looking for. "This is an excellent book, loaded with useful examples. Newcomers to Tk will find the widget descriptions particularly helpful." --John Ousterhout CEO and founder of Scriptics Corporation and the creator of Tcl/Tk "Brent Welch fills an important need for an introduction to Tcl/Tk with an applied focus and with coverage of many of the useful extensions available ...I recommend this book to my new students ...and I keep a copy handy for my own use." --Joseph A. Konstan, Professor of Computer Science University of Minnesota ABOUT THE CD-ROM The accompanying CD-ROM includes the Tcl Web Server; Tcl/Tk distributions for Windows 9x/NT, Solaris, and Macintosh; plus an extensive collection of free Tcl/Tk software-including all the code from the book.Art: Include the same boxed quotes that appeared on the 2e back cover.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Not unlike the hard-to-believe longevity of American Bandstand host Dick Clark, the continuing popularity of Tcl/Tk teaches us an important lesson in software language market adoption: early market share in an area of profound need with an easy-to-use product yields generations of loyal adherents. Long after opinion leaders in the GUI scripting community abandoned Tcl/Tk for more modern scripting languages, Tcl/Tk remains a major player, largely because of John Osterhout's lucid original text Tcl and the Tk Toolkit and more recently because of Brent Welch's encyclopedic Practical Programming in Tcl/Tk, now entering its third edition.
Tcl/Tk survives despite its inelegance ("set x [expr 2 + 2]" rather than "x=2+2") because it was the first practical, well-documented, simple-to-implement solution to the crucial question, "How do I build a GUI for my C program?" Tcl/Tk is available for all major windows and OS environments, including X11 (native Unix-like windows), Microsoft Windows, and Macintosh.
Now with 40 pages of tables of contents, examples, and charts and another 40 pages of newly recompiled indices, Welch's new edition spans 55 chapters divided into seven sections. The sections are divided as follows: two for Tcl, three for Tk, one for the C library, and one for updates in Tcl and Tk distributions and functionality. The third edition appears against a healthy backdrop of new Tcl/Tk development. Perhaps the proudest accomplishment of the Tcl community is TclHttpd (chapter 18), a Web server written largely in Tcl! The new server contributes to efforts to unclog the Web server bottlenecks by providing faster client routes to server-side applications while continuing to support the traditional--albeit slower--common gateway interface. The remainder of the book is not new, but it has been augmented and polished.
Welch has expanded discussions and added examples of Tcl's extensibility and embeddability in C. Tcl/Tk's development scope has grown to include all POSIX internals, such as threads, sockets, TCP/IP interfaces, and secure shells.
Recent Tcl/Tk releases enable meta-level execution through eval() and support for Web client plug-ins, all of which are detailed with examples and careful explanation. Functionally, Tcl/Tk lacks nothing compared to modern scripting languages, except lexical flexibility and object-oriented architecture. Nor does it add anything except familiarity, consistency, and a long history of above-average documentation.
Welch perhaps wisely omits comparison with his competition, just as Dick Clark never mentions Howard Stern. It is beneath the dignity of aging market leaders to look back--or even around. --Peter Leopold
Review
"Brent Welch fills an important need for an introduction to Tcl/Tk with an applied focus and with coverage of many of the useful extensions available . . . I recommend this book to my new students . . . and I keep a copy handy for my own use." -- Joseph A. Konstan, Professor of Computer Science, University of Minnesota
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE book for Tcl/Tk,
This review is from: Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk (3rd Edition) (Paperback)
A comprehensive, systematic guide to practical usage of Tcl/Tkup to version 8.2. Since we have now 8.3 already one needs to checkthe site to see the latest improvements of Tcl. This book constantly helps me to do daily tasks in Tcl. It's a tutorial and a reference. Still I like to mention the book "Effective Tcl/Tk Programming" by Harison / McLennan, which goes much further in tutoring the GUI things. And there is also a handy refernece called "Tcl/Tk, Programmer's Reference" by C.Nelson which fits better onto the desk, if that's an issue. The very old book of Ousterhout himself, which was really great, is now completely outdated.
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
For beginners?! Good joke...,
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This review is from: Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk (4th Edition) (Paperback)
I got interested in Tcl when a friend of mine had presented me with the Expect application and all the wonderfull things it can do for a sysadmin. Since knowledge of Tcl is required for Expect, I set off looking for a book on the topic... and having read the lines "for beginners and expirienced programmers alike" I thought I hit the target. But what a disapointment...First of all, most books for beginners follow certain format which is not the case with this book. Nothing like "here's how to declare variables", "variables are typeless", "here's how procedures/functions are done", "here's what sets Tcl apart from other languages" or "how to do those things that other languages cannot" that other books for beginners so often cover. I had to look online for the line that starts off the freshly written Tcl script... and this is for beginners?! From skimming over Tcl implementations on different platforms (I guess that covered the beginner's part) authors dwelve straight into the HTML processing by Tcl (as in "hey Tcl programmers, here's how to do web pages!") which only adds to confusion. It doesn't stop there though... Tcl is said to be a glue language that puts different blocks together, but how come that passing commands to the system from the Tcl script isn't covered? Yes, there are dedicated commands for cruising through the directory tree, creating/removing/deleting files, but is that all?! Linux has a rich arsenal of commannds, many of which go beyond those tasks... and you cannot pass them from a Tcl script? Where's the glue then... Same confusing format is followed in the Tk part, except for the canonnical "Hello World" example (straightforward "type it in- here's how it works" breakdown) the rest is off the beginner's path. How to clip a Tcl procedure to a Tk button? Nope, that's not shown- but geometry managers examples plenty abound. Examples are incomplete, explanations vague and I often caught myself reading same line several times trying to understand the point that author tries to make. As for my reason for learning Tcl, the Expect application- it is MENTIONED on couple of paragraphs that end with a web address. Although it may be the shiniest example of Tcl's power, it is not even skimmed over... The content offered doesn't justify the price tag for a beginner's book. If you're a beginner you'd be better off working through the online tutorial at tcl.tk page. It is not only money that you'll save...
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe good for experienced programmers,
This review is from: Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk (4th Edition) (Paperback)
I need to learn Tcl because Cisco is starting to use it on their network devices and I need some of the functionality that it provides. I read some on-line tutorials that helped, but thought that I could use a good book to really get up to speed.I was excited when this book arrived.... Until I start reading it.. Long story short, this book may be good for experienced programmers, but it is not good for the novice. I have programmed before, the usual stuff, I took a C/C++ class or two and made a few small programs. Still, the first chapter "Tcl Fundamentals" had me overwhelmed within about a page and a half. I consider myself somewhat technical and usually get through some fairly technical book, but this one is a very hard read.
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