Tcl/Tk, Second Edition: A Developer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) [Paperback]

Clif Flynt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1558608028 | ISBN-13: 978-1558608023 | Publication Date: May 19, 2003 | Edition: 2

Tcl/Tk (Tool Command Language/Tool Kit) makes it fast and easy to implement any type of application, from games to network analyzers. Tcl/Tk is a full-bodied, mature programming platform used by NASA rocket scientists, Wall Street database experts, Internet designers, and open source programmers around the world. Tcl/Tk's multi-faceted and extensible nature make it ideal for developing end-user GUIs, client/server middleware, Web applications, and more. You can code completely in Tcl, use any of hundreds of extensions, call C or Java subroutines from Tcl/Tk, or use Tcl to glue legacy applications together.

Written from a programmer's perspective, Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide describes how to use Tcl's standard tools and the unique features that make Tcl/Tk powerful: including graphics widgets, packages, namespaces, and extensions. With this book an experienced programmer will be able to code Tcl in a few hours. In just a few chapters you will learn about Tcl features that allow you to isolate and protect your code from being damaged in large applications. You will even learn how to extend the language itself.

Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide clearly discusses development tools, proven techniques, and existing extensions. It shows how to use Tcl/Tk effectively and provides many code examples. This fully revised new edition is the complete resource for computer professionals, from systems administrators to programmers. It covers versions 7.4 to 8.4 and includes a CD-ROM containing the interpreters, libraries, and tutorials to get you started quickly. Additional materials in the book include case studies and discussions of techniques for the advanced user.

On the CD-ROM
*Distributions for Tcl 8.3 and 8.4 for Linux, Solaris, Macintosh, and Windows.
*A copy of ActiveTcl from ActiveState.
*The latest release of TclTutor.
*How-to's and tutorials as well as copies of all the tools discussed in the book.
*The author's "Tclsh Spot" articles from :login; magazine and the "Real World" Tcl/Tk chapters from the first edition.
*Demo copies of commercial development tools from ActiveState and NeatWare.
*Many open source Tcl/Tk development tools.
*Tcl/Tk design guidelines.

*Brings beginners up to speed quickly.
*Overview of Tcl development tools, popular extensions, and packages.
*Tips, style guidelines, and debugging techniques for the advanced user.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The best computer programmers are astonishingly more productive than average. One reason is that they use good tools, and they use them well. Clif Flynt's Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide, Second Edition helps you improve your effectiveness as a developer in both of these ways. Tcl is a software language with a great return on investment-it achieves portable, powerful, economical results with great economy. Just a few lines of Tcl are enough to create applications that are both interesting and useful.
Clif draws on his deep experience as a front-line developer to help you get the most out of Tcl. He writes clearly, and has organized his book with instructive examples that teach the essentials of Tcl. He covers the right material too: Tcl/Tk packs in not just such long-standing Tcl strengths such as its easy networking and graphical user interface, but also the latest breakthroughs with internationalization, widget upgrades, and StarPacks.
Want to take your programming to the next level? Get Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide, Second Edition."
-Cameron Laird is vice president of Phaseit, Inc. (http://phaseit.net), where he specializes in Rapid Enterprise Integration with Tcl and related tools. His frequent publications on information technology include the popular "Regular Expressions" column (http://regularexpressions.com).

Book Description

Provides the experienced programmer with the information needed to code Tcl in a few hours.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 758 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 2 edition (May 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558608028
• ISBN-13: 978-1558608023
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #947,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best book on Tcl programming, February 20, 2004

By 

C. Dunn "independent thinker" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tcl/Tk, Second Edition: A Developer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

[I'm stingy in my ratings. I could easily give this book 5 stars, but I try to use the entire rating scale.]

This book is the best available complement to the free HTML documentation (which is available online, or on CD in many books, including this one). I like the latest version of the Welch book, with its vastly improved index, but I find the explanations to be a bit sparse.

For example, I am an experienced programmer in several languages, but I still had a lot of questions about local scoping vis-a-vis namespaces after reading Welch and the docs. Flynt made this topic transparent, with diagrams and examples. I also liked his example of building a tree data structure, which demonstrated to me better than anything that Tcl is simply the wrong language for building trees.

That brings me to what I dislike about this book. The code examples are sometimes too long. In my opinion, long code should be only on the CD, to save paper space. And as the book is shorter than Welch's latest, I think the space should not have been wasted.

About 1/3 of the book is devoted to Tk, similar to Welch. I have no interest in Tk anymore, so that is all a waste for me. (If you ARE interested in Tk, Effective Tcl/Tk programming is a great source.)

There is a fair amount of info on the C library, but I think that Ousterhout's old book is still the best place for that. However, Flynt provides great advice on practical ways of interfacing with C/C++ (SWIG, Starkits, Starpacks).

He also details the pro and cons of various Tcl tools, some free. This sort of information goes out of date quickly. For example, the author already mentioned privately to a friend that "nagelfar" is now his own favorite syntax checker. But at the moment, most of his info is current.

In short, this is the best book for Tcl developers. But please consider Lua as an alternative interfacing language.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like it says, a developer's guide., November 2, 2005

By 

Stephen A. Lajoie (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tcl/Tk, Second Edition: A Developer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

The book is in textbook format, with problems to be worked at the end of each chapter. The problems are of different levels of difficulty. No answers in the back.

The book itself is NOT concise, imho, and there seems to be many references to "see the CD" for complete information. Clearly, it is intended that you work with the CD to first accomplish the tutorials, and then use the book to polish what you've learned via the CD. The cute little "scroll" way of navigating about the CD works well in Windows, but doesn't work on my linux machine. The CD is also the only place where there is "A printable Reference"; at least, that's what the book says. I'm still looking for it.

You clearly get all the stuff you need to become a Tcl/Tk master, but with so much material, the reader is left to blunder through it all the best he can. To meet the goal of learning Tcl/Tk quickly as stated in the introduction, a "road map", "plan of attack", or an order of things to read on the disk should have been included.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hands on approach, September 2, 2007

By 

Paul Floyd (Grenoble France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tcl/Tk, Second Edition: A Developer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming) (Paperback)

This book is fairly informal, with examples dominating the reference parts. I think I'll be using Brent Welch's book more as a reference though. There is good coverage of third party libraries and tools.