Cameron Laird's personal notes on online Tcl tutorials

General-purpose introductions to Tcl or Tcl/Tk

First, it's wise to read Andreas Kupries' introduction to comp.lang.tcl, where much of the daily work of Tcl is carried out.

Tcl-Einführung (ohne Tk) auf Deutsch

Una introduccion espanola a Tcl, e otra a Tcl/Tk

Thomas Sicheritz has tutorials on a variety of Tcl subjects.

Maurice Diamantini, Jean-Jacques Girardot et Anne Possoz ecrivent en francais. Charles Vidal a traduit et ecrit des introductions a Tcl, Tk, et la combinaison Tcl-C.

TclTutor has started many, many successful programmers on their careers with Tcl.

Tcl for Web Nerds is an excellent tutorial.

David Martland's venerable introduction to Tcl has been widely read. It's unfortunate that it has a number of stylistic deficiencies and outright errors (the example code for menus, for example, doesn't work as advertised).

Mac Cody's syllabus for the E-systems study group working through Graphical Applications ...

AOL offers a AOLserver Tcl Developer's Guide and a tutorial on how to use their Tcl-savvy Web server. Getting Started with Tcl URL: http://scriptics.com/scripting/starting.html

Scriptics sponsors a "getting started" page.

Brent Welch keeps much of his book available on-line, as does Adrian Zimmer. Brent also published in '99 a separate tutorial on Tcl syntax.

Tcl in context

Several commentators help newcomers to the subject learn how to think about Tcl. Jean-Claude Wippler does two things in his "Tcl (over-) flow", one of which is to outline the experiences of a newcomer to Tcl. [more explanation] For interesting weekly summaries of action in the Tcl world, see the README: Tcl-URL! Jean-Claude launched. Alexandre Ferrieux's "Concepts of Architectural Design for Tcl Applications" is a "mid-level" (I'm ambivalent about that ascription) explanation of the deep ideas behind exec and open. It also justly deprecates the fashionable craze for thread programming.

Eric Galluzo explains his ideas on things Tcl-ers should know.

How-tos: focused tutorials on specific topics

extensions-embeddings-linking-with-{C,C++,Java,FORTRAN,...}-...

I've collected several examples of [socket] use.

Peterre understands that scripts for eggdrop bots, used on IRC, average a rather low level of programming technique. He's written a focused tutorial on eggdrop scripts that is both accessible and rigorous.

Nat Pryce knows good ways to integrate Tcl scripts into NT.

Christopher Nelson outlines how to use packages, libraries, and bare Tcl source, and also sketches a common idiom for retrieving a result from a modal dialogue. William Duquette offers guidelines on using namespaces and packages, and J. Adrian Zimmer's example stack implementation relies on namespaces.

"Geometry Management" is one of the chapters from his book that J. Adrian Zimmer has made available on the Web.

"Using Turkish Letters With TCL/TK 8.2"

George Staplin recounts what he has learned about How to use Tcl/Tk in Multimedia Applications for X.

Eric Galluzo explains upvar and uplevel.

Expect:

Will Morse's tutorial on Tcl emphasizes Expect's capabilities.
Several tutorials are available through the Expect home page. I'm still deciding which ones to recommend.

D. Richard Hipp demonstrates how to build a scrolled canvas with Mktclapp.

Donal K. Fellow's tutorial on the "option" notion in Tk.

[exec intro]

Tom Poindexter hows how little it takes to use the new object methods to return a Tcl list from C. Note this case has no reference-counting puzzle.

Christopher Hylands astutely illustrates Tcl's use in testing, one of its most important roles. For a more potent version of the same, see DejaGnu ...

regexps

John Reekie on Tcl-Java

Not-yet-classified

Larry Virden recommends John Gotts's counsel on how to track down problems in an application that dumps core

[Explain others]

[Explain plans for tutorials on socket use, writing new commands, ...]

The official FAQ has many entries under "tutorial". Also, the annual Tcl/Tk Conferences have great tutorials.

Other Tcl reference works

[distribution demos, especially widget.html]

[explain different classes of user, and pertinence]

Alan Gauld has an interesting presentation of what programming is that's a natural zeroth step for those headed toward Tcl.

Cameron Laird's index to online Tcl tutorials/claird@phaseit.net