RE: [tcltk-perl] radical rethink of Tk's loading ... (no C)

[Jeff H. <je...@ac...>]

In addition to this, there is a large extra question ...

This reduced Tcl::Tk to only .pm files.  That means we can
consider collapsing it all into the 'Tcl' distribution.  Is
this something we should consider?

Advantages - single distro makes it easier to maintain.

Disadvantages - are we going to reach a painful growth level?
Will Tcl::Tk have numerous submodules eventually that we want
to split out?  Will there be C components for other Tk-related
modules that we don't yet support, but would like to?

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tcl...@li... 
> [mailto:tcl...@li...] On Behalf Of 
> Jeff Hobbs
> Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 4:28 PM
> To: tcl...@li...
> Subject: [tcltk-perl] radical rethink of Tk's loading ... (no C)
> 
> 
> Here is an idea I have about changing around Tcl::Tk, and 
> it's fairly fundamental:
> 
> Change Tcl::Tk::new as follows:
> 
>      $i->SUPER::Init();
> -    $i->Init();
> +    #$i->Init();
> +    $i->Eval("package require Tk 8.4");
> +    $i->call('trace', 'add', 'command', '.', 'delete',
> +            sub { $W{'.'} = undef; });
> +    $i->ResetResult();
>      $Tcl::Tk::TK_VERSION = $i->GetVar("tk_version");
> 
> and then add the following command:
> 
> sub MainLoop {
>     my $int = (ref $_[0]?shift:$tkinterp);
>     while (defined $W{'.'}) {
>        $int->DoOneEvent(0);
>     }
> }
> 
> The one thing this requires is the addition of Tcl_DoOneEvent 
> to Tcl.xs (which I did for testing this).  Everything seems 
> to work just fine after these changes.  I had to make a few 
> more to force the Tk module on Linux not to load the dll 
> (which isn't necessary in any case, but I haven't fully 
> excised it from the build), but the crux of the changes work.
> 
> This means that the only C component is on the Tcl side - 
> there is NO Tk C component, only Tk.pm.  The loading an 
> initialization of Tk is build into the 'package require Tk' statement.
> 
> The disadvantage here is removing any access at the C level 
> to Tk stuff, but currently there is nothing there we use.
> 
> At the same time, I have a patch which adds Tcl stubs support 
> to the Tcl module.  That means we gain Tcl version 
> independence and have more control over what Tcl is used at 
> runtime.  More on that here:
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActiveTcl/tcl/TclLib/InitStubs.htm