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Noumena Corporation


Whitmore Lake
Michigan

Noumena provides on-site instructor-led Tcl, Linux and Database training.

For those who prefer to learn on their own, Noumena recommends TclTutor and Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide.

Learning Tcl/Tk
TclTutor Overview
TclTutor is a computer aided instruction package for learning the Tcl language. It consists of 47 lessons covering the basic Tcl commands, including the dict command.

The format of a TclTutor lesson is a short textual description of a command or concept and an interactive example. The lesson text is available in 3 levels of verbosity, "Expert", "Computer User", and "Beginner". The differing levels of verbosity provide a beginner with more information about computer terminology and general programming techniques, while allowing an experienced programmer to get just the minimal information that they need to start using a command. The expert level can be used as a reference tool after you've started using Tcl/Tk regularly.

The examples can be edited and re-run to experiment with how the command behaves.

TclTutor has been around for over a decade now. It's mostly stable. To make up for that I rework the GUI every few years. This code has been tested on BSD/OS, Linux, MS-Windows, and Macintosh. If it provides you with a surprise, please let me know.

Revision 3.0 Notes
TclTutor has a new GUI, the Blue theme is gone, and TclTutor is now the boring gray color that people seem to prefer. The new GUI is streamlined, uses real paned windows, popup help balloons, and other fancy stuff.

TclTutor is now provided as a StarPack. This means you don't need to have Tcl/Tk installed on your computer to run the tutorial, and installation is much simpler.

TclTutor now comes with lessons in Portuguese

Many, Many Thanks to Lucio Agostinho Rocha, who translated the entire set of lessons into Portuguese. It's taken me too long to make these available in the standard TclTutor distribution, but they are finally here.
  • Beta 1
    • Introduced the new GUI and support for lessons in multiple languages.
  • Beta 2
    • Includes new dict lessons.
    • RC file is hidden on Windows platforms as well as *ix.
    • Support for Mac OS/X on x86 platform.
  • Beta 3 and 4 - internal releases.
  • Beta 5
    • New self-assessment TclExam course
    • Add coverage for some of the 8.5 list commands.
    • Add mention of the {*} operator.
    • General lesson cleanup.
  • Beta 6
    • Bug fix
  • Beta 7
    • Add support for parray command in Run window.

Revision 2.0 Notes

This version of TclTutor has a completely rewritten engine.

New features/bug fixes include

  • Remembers geometry and restarts at the same size it stopped.
  • Saves state when you exit with the \[x\] button, as well as using the menu exit
  • New color editing windows.
  • Continuous font size scaling (instead of too small, too large, and too medium)
  • Installation is simplified for Unix and Windows systems.
  • Beta 4 Changes
    • Fonts for buttons and menubuttons are defined. Should be a reasonable size on all flavors of Windows and Unix.
Installing TclTutor
TclTutor is available in 5 formats:

To install TclTutor follow the instructions appropriate to your platform:

  • \[go to top\] Starpack for Windows

    To install this version of TclTutor:

    1. Download the TclTutor executable to your desktop.
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your hard drive by clicking here.
    2. Double click the tcltutor30b7 icon.
    3. Start learning Tcl

  • \[go to top\] Starpack for Linux X86 32 Bit or 64 Bit.

    To install this version of TclTutor:

    1. Download the TclTutor executable:
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your hard drive by clicking here (for 32 bit CPU) or here (for 64 bit CPU).
    2. Uncompress the file, if you browser didn't do that for you:
      gunzip tcltutor30b7.gz
    3. Double click the tcltutor03b1 icon, or start it from a command line.
    4. Start learning Tcl

  • \[go to top\] A zipped application bundle for PowerPC Macintosh

    1. Download the TclTutor executable:
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your Desktop by clicking
      here for the zip file.

    2. Double Click the MACTclTutor.zip icon.
      This will unpack TclTutor, and create a new icon on your desktop.

    3. Click the tcltutor30b7 icon.

    4. Start learning Tcl

  • \[go to top\] A zipped application bundle for x86 Macintosh

    1. Download the TclTutor executable:
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your Desktop by clicking
      here for the zip file.

    2. Double Click the MACTclTutor30b7.zip icon.
      This will unpack TclTutor, and create a new icon on your desktop.

    3. Click the tcltutor icon.

    4. Start learning Tcl

  • \[go to top\] TclKit for other architectures.

    You can run TclTutor as a Tclkit package if you have Tclkit installed on your system. Tclkit is a single-executable version of the Tcl/Wish installation. You can find many Tclkits at Jean Claude Wippler's site

    1. Download the TclTutor executable:
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your hard drive by clicking here.

    2. Download a tclkit for your system from here

      Put the .kit file and hte Tclkit you downloaded someplace safe.

      Run TclTutor as some variant of tclkit tcltutor30b7.kit

  • \[go to top\] Gzipped Tar archive for any system.

    If all else fails, you can download the sources and run with your installed wish application. This file can be extracted with gunzip and tar.

    Tar will create a TclTutor directory for the program and lesson files. TclTutor.tcl can be executed from that directory.

    1. Download the TclTutor executable:
      You can use your browser to transfer TclTutor to your hard drive by clicking here.

    2. untar the distribution

      gunzip -c tcltutor30b7.tgz | tar -xvf -

    3. If the directory you installed TclTutor.tcl into is in your search path, you can run TclTutor by typing TclTutor.tcl at your shell prompt.

      If the installation directory is not in your search path, you'll need to change to the installation directory to run TclTutor.tcl.

      If all else fails, you can run TclTutor by changing to the TclTutor directory and running wish TclTutor.tcl.

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