*BSD News Article 47606


Return to BSD News archive

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