Tcl'2011 Schedule

Main - Registration - Schedule - Tutorials - Info - Year 2010 Papers - Call For Papers

18th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference

October 24-28, 2011

Comfort Suites Manassas
7350 Williamson Blvd
Manassas, Virginia 20109
Phone: (703) 686-1100
Fax: (703) 686-1128

Important Information
Abstracts and proposals due	August 26, 2011
Notification to authors	September 12, 2011
Author materials due	October 9, 2011
Tutorials start	October 24, 2011
Conference starts	October 26, 2011
Email Contact	tclconference@googlegroups.com

Keynote
Alexandre Ferrieux
Tcl has announced the first scripting language to be supported by NaCl (Google's native client,) giving Tcl programs direct access to Chrome's DOM and marking the first such scripting language alternative to JavaScript. A demonstration of direct Tcl access to HTML5's Canvas is given. A variant of Tk for Native Client will soon follow. Web applications can right now be written completely in Tcl, as the original HTML specifications intended :)

Running Tcl in A Browser. A Survey Of Approaches.
Steve Landers
Oh no, no again - yet another approach to Tcl in the Browser

Tcl has been running in browsers since the early days of the Internet. And yet deployment model is still not mainstream in the Tcl world. With the dominance of the iPad in tablet computing, and the well known limitations on scripting languages in the iOS computing environment, the need for a browser-based Tcl solution is becoming greater.

This talk will survey the various approaches to implementing Tcl in a browser, including historical solutions such as WebRouser and the venerable Tcl Plugin, Java-based solutions such as Jacl running as an applet, Javascript solutions such as Tcl.js and IncrTcl in JS, and native code solutions such as NaTcl. The pros and cons of each approach will be compared, along with other approaches such as implementing the TEBC in Javascript. Finally, the talk will introduce a new effort involving the use of LLVM and the Emscripten technology to translate a Tcl interpreter (in this case, Jim Tcl) to optimised Javascript.

[incr Tcl] in JavaScript
Arnulf Wiedemann
Incr Tcl in Javascript (also called: itcl in Javascript) is a work in progress, which started about February 2011. It's intention is to extend the existing Tcl in Javascript an interpreter for the Tcl language written in Javascript with a lot of additional features and commands as well as an implementation of itcl in javascript. During implementation there was the need for optimizing parsing and evaluation of Tcl statements, which resulted in a partial parsing strategy.

Implementation of Tk widgets in javascript based on DOM nodes/trees
Arnulf Wiedemann
Part of the incr Tcl in Javascript project is, which is intended to be one possible frontend/client part of ATWF and Reporting Tools with Tcl, is a sub project to implement Tk widget using javascript and DOM trees.

That includes a mapping of for example button/label/entry widgets to something which can be done with html parts in creating DOM trees and adding properties and attributes to the DOM nodes, that includes mapping of Tk option model to javascript style model and properties of DOM nodes.

Second goal is to map Tk event handling and bind functionality to the javascript event model and the javascript event listeners/handlers. There are also more complex widgets in work like Tree, Tktable, panedwindow etc.

The selection on which widgets are implemented first is driven by: what is needed for a reporting environment, that includes the decision on which options are implemented first.

Web Servers, Frameworks, Services
Gerald Lester, Matthew Burke, Clif Flynt, Arnulf Wiedemann
A discussion and comparison of Tclhttpd, Apache/Rivet, AOLServer and other web servers that support Tcl scripting.

JTcl and Swank: What's new with Tcl and Tk on the JVM
Bruce Johnson, Tom Poindexter, Dan Bodoh
JTcl is an implementation of the Tool Command Language (Tcl) written in Java and is derived from the Jacl project. The current release (2.0) of JTcl implements a large extent of Tcl 8.4 syntax and commands, limited only by the API restrictions of the Java Virtual Machine. Swank is an implementation of the TK GUI toolkit implemented using the Java Swing GUI API. Most Tk 8.4 widgets and commands have been implemented as well as additional ones based on Swing widgets. This paper describes the current state of these projects and gives examples of their use.

Jim Tcl - A Small Footprint Implementation of Tcl for Embedded Systems
Steve Bennett
Jim Tcl is an Small Footprint implementation of Tcl specifically targeted at embedded systems - both embedded devices and application embedding.

Jim Tcl has some unique advantages over other Tcl implementations: - Fast, highly portable C code with easy cross compilation - Small and modular - Largely compatible with Tcl 8.5 - Unique features, including: true lambda, garbage collection, OO I/O, isomorphic list/dict/array, signal handling

This presentation explains the current state of the Jim Tcl project, why it is particularly suited for embedded projects, and describes the unique features of Jim Tcl in detail.

A number of projects using Jim Tcl will also be highlighted, including: - OpenOCD - Open On Chip Debugging - autosetup - Tcl-based autoconf replacement - µWeb - Embedded Web Framework

TyCL: an interpreter/compiler of a typed language implementation of Tcl/Tk
Andres Buss
TyCL (Typed Command Language) is an implementation of the Tcl language written in TyCL itself. The language follows Tcl's syntax, but given that TyCL is meant to be a full compiler that generates machine code, a new set of features, expansions and cuts had to be applied to the Tcl's syntax that TyCL understand in order to help the compiler to produce better results. Included in those modifications are the concept of types (hence the name of the compiler), which are optional but when used makes TyCL behave more as an static language than a dynamic one.

Tcl at the NSCL: a 30year retrospective
Ron Fox
The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboroatory (NSCL) is an NSF funded laboratory that performs basic nuclear physics research on Systems that are far from stability. The operation of the NSCL has been Funded by the National Science Foundation since (1980).

The NSCL has developed and used several Tcl based applications in data Acquisition and analysis. This retrospective will examine the impact of presenting researchers at the NSCL with Tcl based tools and toolkits. A speculative look forward at the role of Tcl within the NSCL as construct the DOE funded Facility for Rare Isotope Research (FRIB)

A CMake-Based Cross Platform Build System for Tcl/Tk
Clifford Yapp
Defining build logic for a large software package in multiple software development environments entails a large up-front implementation cost and an ongoing maintenance burden. CMake is a cross-platform build tool that allows developers to define relatively abstract build logic that is automatically translated into a variety of build system formats, reducing the burden of supporting multiple development environments. BRL-CAD's integration of Tcl/Tk as a sub-build motivated the development of Tcl/Tk build logic compatible with BRL-CAD's new CMake logic. This paper presents a new CMake based build system for Tcl/Tk and a number of popular Tcl/Tk extensions.

WyattERP - A Non-Sissy ERP Application Development Platform
Kyle Bateman
Historically there have been two choices with ERP's, buy someone else's or develop your own. WyattERP solves this with an innovative approach that upends traditional systems. It leverages the strengths of Tcl/Tk and Postgresql to create a platform that allows quick development and quicker iterations of any new system. This is possible because the logic needed to access and manage the database, and the guts of widget creation are in the library allowing the front end modules to be exceptionally light. A fully functional application can be created with less than a 100 lines of code.

Fluid Dynamics Data experiments with Tcl
Ron Fox
Computer Automated Radioactive Tracking (CARPT) has emerged as a powerful Technique for mapping fluid flow under a variety of conditions. This paper describes the adaptation of a general purpose nuclear physics event-based data acquisition system to the needs of the CARPT apparatus at Missouri University of Science and Technology. The base software is a C++ multithreaded framework which communicates via events with a Tcl interpreter. The Tcl scripts run by the interpreter provide Experimental control, online-data analysis and data storage for later offline analysis.

Agent Based Modeling with Coroutines
Sean Woods
Coroutines have been introduced into the Tcl/Tk core with version 8.6. And many developers ask "what on Earth would I do with them?"

This paper describes how coroutines are used to model human actors following complex, interdependent procedures. During the paper, we will develop a coroutine- based general use architecture for task management. We will also describe some of the common edge cases to look out for.

This paper is based on my experience developing the Integrated Recovery Model for T&E Solutions.

An Overview of the Next Scripting Toolkit for Tcl Programmers
Stefan Sobernig, Gustaf Neumann
Aiming at Tcl developers, we give a primer on the Next Scripting Framework (NSF) and the Next Scripting Language (NX). We look at features such as defining object systems, parametric objects, laying out object states, creating object behaviour, and designing object interfaces. Along the way, we review some syntactic additions and developer support tools for developing NSF/NX programs. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the NSF/NX features, including hands-on code examples.

GSoC 2011 Post-Mortem
Andreas Kupries
Like in the past years, this is a report on the Tcl communities' participation in Google's Summer Of Code.

A Novel Method for Representing Hierarchies in a Relational Database Using Bignums and Sqlite
Stephen Huntely
I introduce a method of using a rapidly-converging infinite series to generate integer values which, when stored in relational database table rows, act as tags allowing each row to be interpreted and queried as a node in a hierarchy. To overcome integer precision limitations, I use Tcl 8.5's Bignum feature and tcllib's math::bigfloat package. I use Sqlite's ability to store arbitrary binary data in its BLOB data type to manage overflow precision digits. The resulting code provides a fast and efficient way to store and query tree-structure data of theoretically unlimited size.

An efficient text mining application for log file analysis in an emulation environment using Tcl/Tk with C
Shyam Mishra
Text mining refers to the process of deriving high quality information from text files. Hardware emulation is the preferred way for verification of multi-million gates SOC designs. Text mining can be applied for log file analysis of huge log files that get generated in an emulation based design verification flow .

Typically an emulation based verification flow consists of two discrete steps, namely compile and runtime. During the compile stage, a HDL design is prepared for emulation. The compile tools generate log files and other reports. Text mining can be applied to extract useful information from those log files and reports in order to help the user detect errors and warnings in compile that might affect the emulation. Logs and reports generated during emulation runtime can also be similarly analyzed.

Using Tcl/Tk, a GUI is developed to use text mining methods on very large emulation databases for log file analysis. Main considerations for design for such text mining application has been that interactive user response remains fast, the parent Emulation control and Debug GUI is able to interact and work with the text mining widget with fast response time, in unblocking manner, and with minimal overhead to the parent Emulation control and Debug GUI. Besides design ensures search operations are fast, the application memory image is low, and the application provides host of ease of debug utilities like GUI based linkages to user RTL source, informative help from the messages in log files. To achieve this intelligent partitioning of functionalities between C++ and TCL code is done. The application makes use of a C/C++ based shared object for efficient retrieval of information from the huge log files generated by the emulation tools. The application GUI makes use of the latest Tcl/Tk features to provide an easy to use interface to give the users a rich debugging experience.

Maintainable, Shareable and Easily Creatable/Updateable toolbar/menubar/statusbar - pillars of any GUI application.
Tarun Goyal
This paper presents a novel approach to efficiently manage, update and share the toolbar/menubar/statusbar widgets that are integral to any TCL/TK based GUI application. However, considering that any GUI would have different windows performing variety of tasks and be dependent on the overall tool state, the solution should effectively support context sensitivity with respect to windows, selected object in its constituent windows and tool status.

The (Active) State of Tcl
Jeff Hobbs
Jeff reviews where we are, how we got here and where we're going. The recently added and soon-to-be added TIPs will be discussed.

Efficient Communication Strategy of Enterprise TCL/TK Application with Multi Process System:-A Study
Kumar Gaurav, Tushar Gupta, Madhur Bhatia
The GUI tool of Veloce emulation system is a TCL/TK based application. The Veloce software has a complex multiple process architecture. The Inter-Process-Communication (IPC) within the software components involves frequent and bulky data transfer between the processes. The VeloceGUI on one hand needs to update its state very frequently based on responses from some of the software components and emulation runtime system, and on the other hand needs huge on demand data transfer from other set of servers.

There are two types of communication methods used by VeloceGUI:

(i) TCL Sockets (ii) Message passing library built over C-Sockets.

This paper discusses, how to use these two communication methods to get maximum speed and minimum memory usage, and also how the TCL/TK based GUI interacts with a larger client-server ecosystem, communicating with each other, using a sophisticated message passing system.

Tcl And Cloud Computing Automation
Patrick Dunnigan
The idea of using cloud computing to augment or replace traditional IT infrastructure is gaining more traction. This session will contrast the cloud with virtualization, explain the difference between private and public clouds and explore Tcls role to play in automating cloud based processes. The open source Tcl libraries Tclcloud and Tclwinrm (to be released) will be discussed.

Tcl application to control multiple blades in coarse and medium grained parallel processing.
Clif Flynt
CPU's and single-board computers are a cheap source of compute power. You can go to Dell or Sun and buy racks of blades, or go to any big-box store and buy a motherboard with on-board networking and more.

A small rack for these can be constructed with a handsaw and plywood, a trivial modification to a powersupply will powercycle them simultaenously, and they can be booted from a server using a PXE boot.

Once you've got a small server farm, you need to control what it's doing.

Dispatcher is an application for distributing tasks across multiple processors and collecting the results.

Conference Committee

Clif Flynt	Noumena Corp	General Chair, Website Admin
Andreas Kupries	ActiveState Software Inc.	Program Chair
Cyndy Lilagan	Iomas Research LLC
Joe Mistachkin	Mistachkin Systems
Brian Griffin	Mentor Graphics
Ron Fox	NSCL/FRIB Michigan State University
Arjen Markus	Deltares
Mike Doyle	Iomas Research LLC
Gerald Lester	KnG Consulting, LLC
Donal Fellows	University of Manchester
Jeffrey Hobbs	ActiveState Software Inc.
Steve Landers	Digital Smarties
Kevin Kenny	GE Global Research Center
Larry Virden	Tcl FAQ Maintainer
Steve Redler IV	SR Technology

Contact Information

fox@nscl.msu.edu