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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!hookup!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!torn!news.bc.net!felix.junction.net!okjunc.junction.net!michael From: michael@okjunc.junction.net (Michael Dillon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD... Date: 29 Jul 1995 19:19:50 GMT Organization: Okanagan Internet Junction, Vernon B.C., Canada Lines: 51 Message-ID: <3ve1km$fs1@felix.junction.net> References: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> <3uvlar$9ju@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <id.RGYL1.NO4@nmti.com> <3va8d0$2na@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: okjunc.junction.net In article <3va8d0$2na@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>, J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: >Peter da Silva <peter@nmti.com> wrote: > >[Tcl] > >>... It's the best tool available for integrating all those config >>file management issues under one hood. > >While i agree with your other opinions, this one is arguable, and >heavily depends on somebody's point of view. I could state ``Perl is >the best tool available for ...'' with just the same right (and both >are true). :-) They are not the same thing. PERL is a great programming language for doing all sorts of sysadmin stuff, for building special tools quickly, for replacing shell scripts.... But TCL is something else. Firstly it is embeddable as the scripting language for other applications similar to IBM REXX and Amiga REXX. Peter was referring to config file management issues. For that you need a couple of things. You need to build tools that allow a person to set up config files in a GUI environment with built in help explanations of what is required but minus the myriad of syntactical issues. Secondly, you need a way to drive other applications via things like drag & drop. TCL combined with Tk is admirably suited for these two things. When you start getting down to actual applications, you are better off extending the TCL language by writing C code to do the actual work and merely allowing TCL to call those procedures and act as the glue. Using this approach you can build a complete integrated graphical desktop for configuring and managing a UNIX system with TCL/Tk as the scripting language. This doesn't display PERL, however, and if you read through the PERL 5 docs you will find that the TCL scripting language can be embedded in PERL as well. Why would you do such a thing? Simple. If you want to build your app in PERL rather than in C but still want to provide the user/admin with a standard macro scripting language, you can do this by embedding TCL within PERL. SCO has built a graphical sysadmin system for their lates UNIX releases using something they call Visual TCL which is TCL with access to the entire Motif user interface and the ability to runb on text terminals too. If you are interested have a look at http://websco.sco.COM:80/Products/vtcl/vtcl.html which will lead you not only to SCO's Visual TCL but also to many other TCL and Tk resources on the Web. -- Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-542-4130 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com