Learning Tclkit

Tclkit is another piece of technology without which our puzzle can't be completed. Basically, it is a single executable file that contains inside it a normal Tcl interpreter along with a set of extensions, such as:

• Tk—for graphic interfaces

• IncrTcl—for object-oriented programming—currently, it is an optional part of TclKit

• TclVFS—the virtual file system, explained earlier; Tclkit contains drivers only for ZIP and MetaKit

• Metakit—this was also explained earlier

The beauty and power of Tclkit comes from fact that it does not require installation, and that it is supported on a wide set of platforms, including:

• AIX

• FreeBSD

• various distribution of Linux on architectures including x86, PowerPC, S/390 and others

• HPUX

• IRIX

• MacOS Classic and MacOS X

• Solaris

• Windows

Tclkit may be obtained from the http://www.equi4.com/tclkit/index.html website.

At the time of writing this book, the latest version contains Tcl version 8.5.2. In the rest of this section, we will consider examples on the Windows...