Re: [MACTCL] Making a Tk app scriptable via AppleScript

[Philip A. <phi...@sh...>]

On 2009-08-16, at 16:20:59, Kevin Walzer wrote:

> To build CVS head (which is the bleeding edge of development), see  
> the instructions at http://tcl.sourceforge.net/. Check on "CVS Tree"  
> for both Tcl and Tk.

Thanks! I wish I had known about that link before. That changes the  
picture considerably. I'm able to compile and run the SDK10.5 version.  
But just to make sure we're on the same page, I used these commands:

cvs -d:pserver:ano...@tc...:/cvsroot/tcl login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@tc...:/cvsroot/tcl co - 
P tcl

cvs -d:pserver:ano...@tk...:/cvsroot/ 
tktoolkit login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@tk...:/cvsroot/ 
tktoolkit co -P tk

I hope that's what you are using.

With the stock 8.6 version as I compiled it, I was able to run a few  
standard AppleScript commands like "properties of every window" but  
not "do script". So I have tried one method to get "do script" to  
work. It does so but at the expense of foregoing the standard Cocoa  
behaviors. I'm not sure if I can overcome this limitation but I have  
another option I know about to try to have both the standard and  
custom areas working. Failing that, I think another choice would be to  
implement the standard application and window properties in the Tk  
code itself. This could be good because with the stock behavior, the  
dictionary lies about Wish having document elements (I couldn't find a  
single occurrence of NSDocument doing a search in Xcode -- although  
it's a well known thing that Xcode fails to find stuff on a regular  
basis).

With the test method I implemented, I also was able to get the 'doit  
with parameter…' command to work in C code directly, so at least it  
seems it will good for other arbitrary commands as well. This would  
seem to mean that if followed through, the standard Wish dictionary  
could look very similar to the one I put in the Wishbone example and  
be extensible. While that's not exactly plush, it would be an accurate  
representation of what a basic Tk application can do, and I think  
(still need to do some more testing) that it would enable a  
theoretical 14,000,000+ of each of several varieties of custom  
commands and also have a print settings record available. I did not  
have enough time to test my namespaced proc handler style in  
AppMain.tcl but I'm reasonably sure that it will work in 8.6.

Anyway, that's all the time I had this weekend. I hope to have some  
more news near the end of the week.


> Do you mean 10.5? 10.6 isn't out yet...

No I mean that the Xcode project I got previously called "das-tcltk- 
bb1f166a1261722f693b9a8d3c13fa47420e09a4" (I forget which link I  
snagged) requires a 10.6 Xcode. I guess Daniel has to account for  
possible changes in Snow Leopard…


>> I'd appreciate it if you can tell me the formal channel…

> See https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=12997...

Thanks for that as well.


Philip Aker
echo as...@lv...@nl | tr a-z@. p-za-o.@

Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.