Tutorials

November 14 - 18, 2016

Crowne Plaza Houston River Oaks
Houston, Texas, USA
2712 Southwest Freeway, 77098
Phone: 1-713-5238448
Fax: 1-713-5771273


One of the best reasons to attend the Tcl conference is the tutorial track. These sessions are presented by Tcl experts - people who write the packages, write the books, and develop applications on a daily basis. They share their knowledge of Tcl/Tk and the practical experience in developing large, robust applications. Whether you're new to Tcl or experienced, these sessions will help you develop your projects more quickly.

Free Tutorials

This year we are offering FREE tutorials Monday and Tuesday evenings. These will be 1-2 hour lectures on special topics. Anyone is welcome to attend the evening lectures, whether they are a member of the conference or not.

Tutorial schedule

Morning Afternoon Evening
Monday Introduction to Tcl 1 Introduction to Tcl 2
Advanced Windows Integration with Eagle, Garuda, and Harpy Advanced TclOO & Megawidgets in TclOO
Tuesday Building Tcl Extensions Fun with CoRoutines
Tcl on Android GUI Testing with tktest

Tutorial Information

GUI Testing with tktest — Clif Flynt

Testing Tcl scripts is straightforward. Testing a GUI is not. Clif will describe techniques for development and regression testing GUIs, both with standalone scripts and using TkTest.

Introduction to Tcl 1 — Clif Flynt

Required: Knowledge of basic programming concepts. No previous experience with Tcl required.

This course gives you all the knowledge you need to produce useful Tcl scripts, as well serving as a framework for exploring more advanced features of Tcl. We'll explore basic Tcl syntax and commands, string processing, data structure manipulation, basic process interaction, and file handling.

Introduction to Tcl 2 — Clif Flynt

Required: Knowledge of basic programming concepts and very basic Tcl.

This course gives you all the knowledge you need to produce useful Tcl scripts, as well serving as a framework for exploring more advanced features of Tcl. We'll explore basic Tcl syntax and commands, string processing, data structure manipulation, basic process interaction, and file handling.

Tcl on Android — Clif Flynt

Androwish makes it easy to develop Android applications using standard Tcl/Tk. It supports the usual Tk widgets and has hooks into the Android functions like speech-to-text, location, accellerometer, etc. The Androwish SDK makes it easy to wrap your Tcl/TK application and make it ready for the App store.

Clif will describe the unique features of Androwish, and how to set up and use the Androwish SDK to develop 'Droid Apps.

Advanced Windows Integration with Eagle, Garuda, and Harpy — Joe Mistachkin

Tcl/Tk works well on Windows; however, making it work seamlessly with the major software ecosystems on Windows can be a challenge. Also, securely deploying trusted scripts can be a problem.

Eagle and Garuda enable seamless integration with the major software ecosystems on Windows (e.g. Win32, COM, .NET, PowerShell, MS Office, etc). Harpy enables secure script evaluation for Tcl and Eagle on all platforms that support the .NET Framework (Windows and POSIX via Mono).

This course will cover exactly how to use all of these packages effectively.

Advanced TclOO & Megawidgets in TclOO — Sean Woods

Required: Basic knowledge of Tcl and TclOO

Advanced TclOO

Sean will discuss how to extend TclOO to produce application frameworks. Included in this course will be property tracking, option handling, message passing, factory models, and objects which swap class during processing. The course will introduce the "Tao" framework, but the lessons will be applicable to any project which uses TclOO.

Megawidgets in TclOO

Sean will build upon the framework in "Advanced TclOO" to produce a megawidget framework in TclOO. Included in this course will be API design, implementing model/view/controller in Tk, signal pipelines, and building canvas content with drawing layers. The course will introduce the "TaoTk" framework, but the lessons will be applicable to any project which uses TclOO and Tk.

Building Tcl Extensions — Sean Woods

Many programmers use Tcl extensions. But how many actually write them? This course will be an introduction to writing Tcl and Tk extensions in C. It will cover using the Tcl Extension Architecture (TEA), Critcl, and a new architecture, Practcl. Participants will be given a primer on build automation in SH, autoconf, and Tcl script. The course will also include an overview of Tcl C API essentials.

Fun with CoRoutines — Sean Woods

You have heard of them. Maybe even tried them out. Perhaps you don't know where to start. This course will be an introduction to coroutine programming. Topics covered include replacing state machines with coroutines, network protocol implementations, and interactions between coroutines and TclOO objects. The course will also cover using coroutines to implement dialog driven interfaces, and game AIs

Contact information

tclconference@googlegroups.com