Unix/Win GUI re-evaluation

[Michael Tiller]

Stan Shebs wrote:
> 
> Hi all, I've been rethinking the choice of tcl/tk for the GUI for the
> Unix/X11 and Windows versions of Xconq.
> 
> At this point the tcl/tk interface hasn't entirely lived up to its
> original promise.  Although it proved easy to get an interface going,
> it's been harder to make it fully functional - every new bit of
> interface requires a set of new C-coded tcl commands to get the data
> from the kernel into tcl-land, and vice versa.  So the tcl interface
> has become just as large and complicated as the other interfaces.

Have you looked at using SWIG ( http://www.swig.org ) to automatically
generate your C-coded Tcl commands?  There are a few other tools as well
that do similar things.

> Another selling point of the tcl interface is that it works on
> Windows.  Indeed it does work - however the low-level Windows code in
> tk is missing some graphics functionality that is crucial to Xconq,
> which means tk internals hacking, since nobody in the tcl/tk community
> seems to be spending time on improving its graphics support.

Actually, there is work going on to improve the graphics.  I think the
effort is called "Tkgs" although I'm not sure.  The goal was to improve
the graphics subsystem while keeping it platform independent and
incorporating a bunch of speedups.

> Also, I have been unable to get the tcl/tk interface to run anywhere
> near as fast as the old Xaw version, despite doing a bunch of
> profiling and tuning.  Responsiveness is key to a good game, even for
> non-real-time games like Xconq.

Have you posted anything in comp.lang.tcl asking how to speed things
up?  I know there is a Tk patch for Windows which improves canvases. 
There may also be some tricks.

> Finally, setting up the installation is very complicated, what with
> libraries of tcl code and env vars to deal with.  Worse, there don't
> seem to be many other examples to follow - the best seems to be Cygnus'
> own use of tcl/tk in their GDB GUI, and that one is known to need
> front-line support people to deal with all the things that go wrong,
> even with prebuilt binary packages!

Does Cygnus have a licensed copy of TclPro?  If so, you can use the
"wrapper" application to make stand alone binaries.  There is also a
freeware tool called "freewrap" which does the same thing (but only for
Linux and Windows).

-- 
Michael Tiller