NeoSoft Commercial Tcl Support Thank you for your interest in NeoSoft's commercial Tcl support. We offer a flexible support plan that can be tailored to your organization's needs. NeoSoft Tcl is our integration of the core Tcl technologies into a professionally maintained and supported release. Below is a description of NeoSoft Tcl and our Tcl services. To set up a support contract, or if you need more information, please contact us at +1 713 968 5800 9-4 M-F, or send email to sales@NeoSoft.com. NeoSoft Tcl: Includes the latest Tcl, Extended Tcl, Tk, and XF source. Includes the graph and photo widgets, compiled in at your option. NeoSoft's Tcl support libraries are included, providing useful tools such as dialog boxes, a file requester, and many additional functions. Includes xpm pixmap library to allow any widget's bitmap to be a color pixmap, TIFF, GIF, etc. Point releases of Tcl, Extended Tcl, Tk and XF integrated and made available within thirty days. Major releases made when code is stable and needed tools are available. No license is required to redistribute with an application. Documentation comes in nroff and postscript (tm) formats. Available via FTP, DC-600A data cartridge, DAT tape (in DATA/DAT format) or 3.5" high density floppy disks. Service types: Basic service: Source copy of NeoSoft Tcl. Binaries built on your machine using telnet or modem, if needed. Free updates for a year (available via FTP or media). 8 hours of support, including consulting, bug fixing, etc. Standard documentation set. Release notes. NeoSoft Tcl T-shirt (specify L or XL). Additional support available on an hourly basis. Price: $3500/year NeoSoft Tcl and Tk Training Information NeoSoft is perhaps the premier corporate contributor to the Tcl and Tk toolkit efforts. Our groundbreaking work in Tcl and Tk dates back to its first appearance in 1990, and is reflected by the copious amount of concepts and code taken from Extended Tcl for use in the Tcl baseline. We continue to collaborate with Dr. John Ousterhout, the author of baseline Tcl and Tk, on the forthcoming releases of Tcl, Extended Tcl and Tk. NeoSoft's Tcl training efforts have been a natural outgrowth of our work with, and extensions of, Tcl. The philosophy of the course is one of immediate, maximum impact by rapid immersion into hands-on building of X-windows graphical user interfaces and the Tcl programs that underly a number of useful applications. This approach grew out of our first-generation Tcl training course, where we discovered that students became very excited once the Tk toolkit was introduced and they could begin typing statements and interactively creating sophisticated X-windows interfaces. Training Options We are flexible and can customize a course to your specific needs. We have found that almost everyone is content with one of a few options. The class lasts for two or three days, at your option. The class can be structured to support new Tcl and Tk users and/or users with significant prior experience. In either case, it is nice to allocate some unstructured time at the end of the class to talk about specific applications and issues that the students are interested in, including new users, approaches, tools, environments, and the future of Tcl itself. Course Location and Times The course can be taught at your company's facility, or at our training facility located in Houston, Texas. Enrollment is limited to ten people per class to provide a substantial amount of instructor attention to each student. If the course it to be held at your company's facility, there should be no less than one workstation per two students, if at all possible. The class can be taught over a weekend. Contact NeoSoft for pricing and availability. Instructor The class will be taught by Karl Lehenbauer, the co-author of Extended Tcl. Karl is an experienced trainer, having taught and/or developed previous courses on Unix, Unix system administration and Tcl/Tk. Course Goals Teach Tcl and Tk with the maximum impact by building real world applications in the classroom. Site Prerequisites Integrated copy of Tcl and Tk, including Extended Tcl, running on site. Course Contents Below is the list of basic sections of the class, beginning with the elementary things that we would teach to users without prior Tcl experience and ending with building several tools that are useful, real-world applications in their own right. We can work with you to tailor the course to your organization's specific needs. Section 1 Hello, World Concepts: Typing commands interactively into the interpreter. The most important command in Tcl: "proc" Passing arguments to Tcl procedures. The C "Hello, World" koan in a graphical context: The button command The pack command Section 2 Making Choices with Buttons Concepts: Variables and variable substitution Radiobuttons Checkbuttons More on the pack command Section 3 A quartet of application launchers Concepts: Launching applications Tcl Language elements: Variable assignment Conditional expressions Beginning file I/O Square-bracket substitution Generating window elements from data Accessing command line arguments Section 4 Building a support library: The dialog box Concepts: The message widget Control structures: if/else/endif Default values for procedure arguments First mention of Tk's event loop Subordinate toplevel windows 'tkwait' to support sequential control Section 5 Building pulldown and popup menus Concepts: The menu widget Binding commands to keypress events Section 6 A few simple but useful applications Concepts: Intermediate file I/O Delayed execution with 'after' Temporal commands (getclock, fmtclock) Capturing a spawned command's output in a variable Section 7 Building a support library: The file selector Concepts: The listbox and scrollbar widgets The frame widget More about the packer Section 8 Creating a text editor with the text widget Concepts: The text widget Text widget tags More about key bindings Integrating support library examples Section 9 Creating a hypertext system with the text widget Concepts: More about the text widget More about text widget tags Builds on the text editor Section 10 X resource customizer Concepts: Use of the "send" command to access another interpreter. More about text widget tags. Builds on the text editor to make a new tool. Section 11 Introduction to the canvas widget Concepts: Introduces the canvas widget. Tags and tag processing. More on list processing. Use of different canvas widget types. Section 12 A second encounter with the canvas widget Concepts: Commands and options within the canvas widget. Combining items with actions. A new application launcher. Section 13 Creating a drawing tool with the canvas widget Concepts: Traversing items within a canvas widget. Section 14 Sysadmin tool: New user creator Section 15 Sysadmin tool: ttytab editor Section 16 Developer tool: The proc browser Concepts: More on using "send" to access another interpreter. Using "info" to find variables and procedures. Using entry widgets. Section 17 Color editor Concepts: Slider widget Performing math with the "expr" command