The documentation for:
XF: An interface builder for Tcl/Tk

What is XF ?
------------
XF allows you to interactively build and modify a user
interface based upon the Tcl/Tk package. You will need the
Tcl/TK package to run XF (at least version 2.3). The output
generated by XF is a Tcl/Tk script that can be executed with
wish or any other Tcl/Tk interpreter.

The idea for XF was born when I got my fingers on BYO. You
will find that some basic concepts of BYO have been taken
for XF, but there are a lot of changed/additional
concepts/features:

XF features:
	  - provides full support for TK 3.2 (!!!),
	  - editing "on the fly". XF is running as a
	    part of the application (not in an external
	    wish),
	  - editing of existing Tcl/Tk programs,
	  - placing and sizing of widgets by direct
	    manipulation (what I call direct manipulation :-),
	  - full access to all widget attributes,
	  - cut and paste functionality,
	  - provides the access to "templates" (pieces
	    of interface elements and procedures that
            can be inserted in your program),
	  - integrates your preferred editor (emacs :-),
	  - integrates version control for procedures,
	  - a help system (you should really use it if
            you get frustrated :-),
	  - interactive tutorial,
	  - support for xygraph, hypertext and photo,
	  - allows the fast and flexible integration of
	    new widget types (contact me if you have an
	    interesting widget and want to integrate it
	    into XF),
	  - creation of widget structures via procedures,
	  - modularization of the output script,
	  - setting of resources for widget groups,
	  - autosaving,
	  - and much more to be discovered....

This documentation tries to give a introduction to XF. It
contains about 120 pages. A great part of the pages (about
90 pages) are automatically prepared for the help system.

Requirements:
-------------
This documentation is written for LaTeX.

Installation:
-------------
Please unpack the XF documentation distribution inside the
directory where XF is "officially" located (i.e.
/usr/local/lib/xf). The compressed tar file contains the latex
sources for the documentation in a directory tree named
"xf-doc/...". To build the documentation you will require
LaTeX, makeindex and a dvitoWhatever. If you have no access
to one of these, I can provide a postscript file (if there
is enough interest I will upload that file too).

To make a one sided dvi file you can call:

	make doc

To make a two sided dvi file call:

	make doc2

To print the dvi file use your converter (i.e. dvips). By
default the documentation contains all postscript pictures.
If your target device is not a postscript printer, or you
don't want to print all those pictures, you can rename the
directory "pictures" to "pictures.real" and the directory
"pictures.empty" to "pictures".

If you want to install the help pages, and parts of the
tutorial, you have to configure the Makefile. The Makefile
contains some path names that must correspond to your
system. You only have to adapt the Makefile at the top of
the distribution directory tree. To extract the help pages
and the tutorial type:

	make Help

Availability:
-------------
XF-DOC is available via anonymous ftp at:
	harbor.ecn.purdue.edu:	pub/tcl/contrib/docs/xf-doc.tar.gz
	ftp.ibp.fr:		pub/tcl/contrib/docs/xf-doc.tar.gz
	nic.funet.fi:		pub/languages/tcl/docs/xf-doc.tar.gz
	coma.cs.tu-berlin.de:	pub/tcl/docs/xf-doc.tar.gz

Please look for patchfiles beyond the archives patchlevel!!

Mailing list:
-------------
There exist two mailing lists for XF. Take a look at the
file MAILLIST in the XF source directory.

Feedback (Author):
------------------
Sven Delmas
TU Berlin, Germany
garfield@cs.tu-berlin.de


