20020709: Upgrading Tcl/Tk within McIDAS

>From:  Wahner Paul Contr CSR4500 <address@hidden>
>Organization:  Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
>Keywords:  200207091223.g69CNma14253 McIDAS Tcl/Tk 7.3.4

Paul,

>My current project is to create a model grid display gui using the notebook
>widget in the similar vein as the McIDAS GUI's Image Display and Grid
>Display GUI's. There are other notebook widgets out there but some require
>newer versions of Tcl/Tk than what is distributed with McIDAS. 

I am glad to hear that you are diving into development of this interface.
Hopefully, you will be willing to share your efforts with the rest of us.

>As an experiment on my Linux box, I took Tcl/Tk 8.3.4, extracted it into the
>McIDAS tree. Renamed the distributed tcl and tk directories to tcl8.0 and
>tk8.0 then renamed the tcl8.3.4 and tk8.3.4 to tcl and tk. After a one line
>change in tclcomp, everything compiled and installed. However, after
>starting McIDAS with the Gui, I found that when I moved the cursor in the
>image window it would completely disappear. The other strange thing, beside
>the disappearing window, was that there was to core dump or other error
>messages of any kind generate. 

I have known about the cursur tracking problem in McIDAS when using
versions of Tcl/Tk that are _newer_ than 8.0.x.

>The question then is does anyone have a feeling as to the level of effort
>required to incorporate Tcl/Tk 8.3 into McIDAS?

I believe the problem is in interface code to Tcl/Tk, and that the fix
should be straightforward.  The formalism for adding user functions to
Tk changed between 8.0.x and later versions.  The good news is that all
versions after 8.1 support the same approach, and it should be
backwardly compatible.

>It appears to me that there
>may not be a lot of work required but I wanted to ping the community for
>thoughts. If I'm wasting my time, don't be afraid to say so. 

You would not be wasting your time, and a successful effort would allow
me, at least, to upgrade my distribution's Tcl/Tk bundle to a current
version.  Again, I hope you will share your findings with the rest of
the McIDAS community.

>Thanks!

Cheers,

>Paul Wahner
>MIDDS Systems Engineer/ Meteorologist
>CSR 4500, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
>address@hidden
>(Com) 321.853.8184 (Fax) 321.853.8291
>(DSN) 467.8184

Tom
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