Tcl/Tk 8.6

Tcl/Tk 8.6 offers you a very effective misc programming tool which is designed to be easy to embed into other applications. As a language, it is much like UNIX shell languages. There is very little syntax and it is easy to learn. It is used to glue building blocks built in system programming languages like C, C++, and Java together.

These building blocks appear as commands, or verbs, in the script language. It is easy to embed Tcl into a legacy program so you can script the behavior of that program and add in other building blocks like a GUI interface. The Tcl interpreter is written in C and has been ported to almost every computer platform.

Major Features:

1. Highlights of Tcl:
   • Speed: 8.5 now runs 10% faster than 8.4 with bytecode improvements, object caching and reduced memory usage.
   • Bignums: Tcl now supports arbitrary-precision integers, which improves math operations on large integers.
   • Safer interps: Tcl's powerful safe interpreter mechanism now has improved control of time and command limits in slave interpreters.
   • clock command: More robust implementation of command for specifying time, with significant l10n and i18n improvements.
   • dict command: New data structure that allows access to data by value rather than a variable name, which is substantially faster.
   • Additional improvements: Faster list search, new and improved mathematics procedures, anonymous procedures, new ways to package Tcl extensions, Tcl-level custom channel types, file and line location information for each command, and more.
2. Highlights of Tk:
   • New modern theming engine: New and complementary widgets that make use of platform-specific theming on Mac OS X and Windows to better fit in with those environments, and feature an improved look and feel under X11. (screenshots)
   • New widgets: Part of the themed widget set, Tk now has core notebook, combobox, treeview and progressbar widgets.
   • text widget: Smooth scrolling, widget peering, and improved procedures for counting and replacing text.
   • Font rendering: Now uses anti-aliased text under X11, and a more modern text engine (ATSUI) on Mac OS X.
   • Additional improvements: Window transparency, new fullscreen option for windows, enhancements to specific widgets and window layout, and more.