The TkSteal extension
Copyright (c) 1995 by Sven Delmas All rights reserved. See the file COPYRIGHT for the copyright notes.
- Incorporated changes from Eric Lindblad to compile
with Tck/Tk 8.6.x. This only fixes Tck/Tk, other
libs are no longer supported really.
Thanks Eric :-)... long time since I did anything
with this code.
I haven't done anything with this code base for ~ 20 years, so things are quite of of date. Eric submitted a number of changes and suggestions, which I gladly share, however my life has moved on from this, so I won't have time to dedicate to this. If anyone wants to take over, happy to pass the torch. Good old times, but it seems that a lot of stuff has dried up, so I hope this remains useful to some folks.
I will enable wiki's for all my projects, so folks can share notes if there is any interest.
Notes from Eric: Running the configure script with the option --with-config-local picks up the system installed shared libaries for the following.
Debian 11.1
blt=1
Slackware 15.0
itcl=1 tix=1
I've been unsuccessful using config.local for a system installed tclx shared library.
TCL-DP 3 series has libraries which do not exist in the 4 series.
Another indicated change - aside from that of wish/tkAppInit.c - is that libtix is now named libTix. I changed that in the config file based upon that comment.
Neither TCL-DP nor Tix have been updated for Tcl 8.6 and one must use the flag -DUSE_INTERP_RESULT.
This small extension to Tk allows the embedding of external programs like emacs and xterm. This widget gives you COMPLETE access to emacs and xterm, which means that these programs are completely integrated into your Tk interface.
To embed emacs, you can use the "tkEmacs" command, and the command "tkSteal" is a general interface to embed other applications (like xclock etc.). Take a look at the demos in the demo.TkSteal directory to see how to work with these commands. The files "./demo.TkSteal/tkEmacs3.tcl", "./demo.TkSteal/tkSteal1.tcl" and "./demo.TkSteal/tkSteal2.tcl" are most interesting.
The file "./demo.TkSteal/windowTree.tcl" is an application which displays the complete X window tree and allows you to select windows for mapping, unmapping or reparenting. If you have problems with reparenting, please play a little with this program to see which window hierarchy contains the window that has to be reparented. Please be careful with this program as you can kill your X server with it.
The file "./demo.TkSteal/xtermwish.sh" is a small demo that embeds an xterm with the running wish into the wish's widget hierarchy. This demo requires Tk to be installed, as you have to install (append) the code in the file "./demo.TkSteal/wishrc" to the file "~/.wishrc". Once you have done this, you can activate the wish with "xtermwish.sh".
In the subdirectory "./tkemacs", you can find an application that uses the TkEmacs widget. It is an emacs with scrollbars, menus, fileselector boxes, etc.. The library file named tkEmacs.tcl is installed to the directory that is specified with the variable TKEMACS_LIBRARY in the Makefile.
This distribution contains the code required to build a new wish. It should not be necessary to change any existing applications to embed it into the widget. If you want to use emacs 18.59, please read the installation guide carefully, as the emacs 18.59 distribution seems to have a bug that must be fixed first before you can use emacs 18.59 as a Tk widget.
If you use this widget (program), be aware of the fact that it can cause trouble. It was tested, but as emacs is a complex system and Tk is a complex system, too, there may still be some problems.
If you encounter any problems, please let us know. If you are able to locate the bug, please send problems, bug fixes and ideas to:
Feel free to modify/adapt the sources and to write new lisp functions for improved functionality. If you do so, please let me know, so that I can improve the widget for me and the other users (if there are any).
- The Tk-4.0 package (or newer ?).
- Emacs 18.57 or a later version or Lucid emacs 19.6
or a later version (other versions should work as well;
the patch doesn't do anything really fancy). Only
required if you want to use TkEmacs.
- The Tcl-DP package from Lawrence A. Rowe, Brian Smith,
and Steve Yen (this package is not part of the
distribution). Only required for TkEmacs. The Tcl-DP
package is available at:
ftp.aud.alcatel.com
When you call ./configure in the temporary TkSteal build directory (see below, several additional parameters allow the selection of new packages etc.. Several packages allow the setting of additional subparameters. Setting one of these subparameters means that all default settings for the subparameters are ignored. So you have to list all required subparameters by hand. Most parameters are directly mapped to compiler options, so the configuration can also be adapted by changing the Makefile directly. The configuration reads the file "config.init", where the several default settings are defined. The current parameters are stored in the file "config.local". This file can be used by calling ./configure with -with-config-local.
IMPORTANT!!!! If you call ./configure with new parameters (compared to a previous call of ./configure), you should call "make clean" before you build the new wish.
-with-blt (default=off)
This adds the BLT extension to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
BLT package before you build this
package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../blt for a local
copy.
-with-config-local (default=off)
Call ./configure with the parameters
of the last ./configure call.
-with-expect (default=off)
This adds the expect extension to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
expect package before you build this
package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../expect for a local
copy.
-with-itcl (default=off)
This adds the itcl extension to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
itcl package before you build this
package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../itcl for a local
copy.
-with-kanji (default=off)
This allows the building of a Kanji
wish. You have to provide the already
patched Tk source tree under the name
../tk4.0-jp (or ../tk4.0jp) and the
patched Tcl source tree under the name
../tcl7.4-jp (or ../tcl7.4jp).
-with-nogcc (default=off)
This disables the usage of gcc, irrespective
of the existance of gcc.
-with-noshlib (default=off)
Even if the system supports shared
libraries, don't build them.
-with-tcldp (default=off)
This adds the Tcl-DP package to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
tcl-dp package before you build this
package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../tcl-dp for a local
copy.
-with-tclload (default=off)
This adds the dynamic loading package to
the wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build the shells package
before you build this package. The shells
package must be located in the same
directory as the other extension packages
under the name "shells".
-with-tclX (default=off)
This adds the TclX extension to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
extended Tcl package before you build
this package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../tclX for a local
copy.
-with-tix (default=off)
This adds the Tix extension to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
Tix package before you build this
package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../tix for a local
copy.
-with-tkicon (default=off)
This adds the TkIcon extension to
the wish.
-with-tklibrary=pathName (default=/usr/local/tk...)
This specifies a new TK_LIBRARY path.
The new Tk library searches for the
Tk library files in this directory.
-with-tkmegawidget (default=off)
This adds the TkMegaWidget extension to
the wish. There are several
subparameters for this parameter:
-with-tkmegawidget-des (default=off)
adds the DES encryption library
to the TkMegaWidget.
-with-tkmegawidget-localdes (default=off)
causes the use of the local des
library. Otherwise, a globally
installed des library is used, if
there is any.
-with-tkmegawidget-debug (default=on)
adds the debugger code. This
means that it is possible to run
two separate interpreters where
one interpreter is used to debug
the second one.
-with-tkmobal (default=off)
This adds the TkMobal extension to
the wish.
-with-tksteal (default=on)
This adds the TkSteal extension to
the wish.
-with-turndial (default=off)
This adds the tkTurndial widget to the
wish. Adding this feature makes it
necessary to build and install the
tkTurndial package before you build
this package. If there is no globally
installed library, configure looks
in the directory ../tkTurndial for a
local copy named "libtkTurndial.a".
-with-xpm (default=off)
This adds the Xpm3 library to the link
command in case Tk was extended with the
externally available Pixmap support. If
there is no globally installed library,
configure looks in the directory ../xpm
for a local copy.
1) Please take a look into the "Portability"
section at the bottom first. The installation
may require a special handling for your system.
2) Unpack the Tk distribution. Build the Tk
distribution as described in the Tk README. If
your system supports shared libraries, and
you want to use them, you should build the
Tcl and the Tk distribution with the
tcltk_shlib package published by Xiaokun Zhu.
3) Unpack the TkSteal distribution in the same
directory where you have unpacked the Tk
distribution.
4) The resulting directory structure will look
about like that:
.../
|
+-- tcl7.4
|
+-- tk4.0
|
+-- TkSteal
|
+-- TkMegaWidget
|
....
Now change into the new TkSteal directory.
5) Configure the distribution by running ./configure.
And do all the things you usually do to get a
working Tk. To select certain additional
packages and perform other changes of the new
wish, you can call ./configure with several
parameters. Take a look into the configure
section above for a detailed list. You should
take care that the TK_LIBRARY path is valid.
This means that you either use the path from
a previous Tk installation, or you create the
new path, and copy all Tk library files to that
directory.
6) A new libtk will be built, as there are some
minor problems with certain packages (especially
with tcl-DP). This libtk is totally compatible with
the previous libtk (the static and the shared
version). So, I decided to install the library
under the same name. If you do not want this,
change the TK_LIB_NAME in the toplevel Makefile
(go to 8)).
7) Build the new wish (to build a new wish with
a manually adapted Makefile, go to 8)). This
will copy the required files to the local
directory. Then these files are patched (the
protocol can be found in the files *.patch.out).
The new local libtk and the required local
extension libraries are built. Finally the new
wish is linked. If your system supports shared
libraries, they will be generated automatically.
As the position of shared libraries is usually
very critical, the libraries are automatically
installed in the final library directory when
they are built. This makes it necessary that you
have write permission for that directory. To
build the new wish, type:
make
Now go to 9) to continue the installation.
8) If you want to change the toplevel Makefile
manually (usually this is not required), first,
you have to call:
make prepare
Adapt the Makefile to your personal needs. Now
you can build the new wish (don't call "make"
as you would normally do (see 7)), but call:
make wish
9) You can now install everything by typing this:
make install
This will install the new wish, the new library
files and the new doc. By default, the library
files are placed in the TK_LIBRARY directory.
The original Tk tclIndex file in the directory
where the new Tk library files are installed
(this is usually the Tk library directory... e.g.
/usr/local/lib/tk4.0) has to be changed. It must
contain the autoload code for the new Tcl commands
("tkEmacs", "tkSteal"). If you do not add the
autoload code, you have to load the files
"tkEmacs.tcl", "tkSteal.tcl" or explicitly in your
code. Please take care to keep the tclIndex file
up to date when you install other packages. The
tclIndex file must contain the following lines:
set auto_index(tkEmacs) "source [set dir]/tkEmacs.tcl"
set auto_index(tkSteal) "source [set dir]/tkSteal.tcl"
10) To see what the widgets can do for you, change to
the directory named ./demo.TkSteal and type
"../wish/steal-wish -f tkEmacs1.tcl" (do this for
all tcl files in the directory).
11) After that, you should test the new installed
wish. If everything works fine, you can remove
the temporary build directories.
12) To prevent problems, please don't use this directory
structure for totally different configurations. The
subdirectories may contain newly copied files that
are not removed automatically when you reconfigure
the distribution. So you will end up in a totally
corrupted distribution (especially the libtk directory
will be corrupted, and will create libtk.a versions
that cannot work). So, if you decide to reconfigure
this package, and to drop certain packages from the
new wish, please delete the current directorytree.
Use a newly unpacked distribution to prevent trouble.
- Make a symbolic link (or a small shellscript or
a link/copy of emacs) from your emacs to an
executable named TkEmacs. This means that you can
call your favorite emacs by typing TkEmacs. This
is required to make the selection of the correct
emacs easier (TkEmacs is the default emacs used by
the emacs widget).
- Install all .el files from the TkSteal
distribution in an emacs lisp directory. The file
advice.el is part of this distribution for the
emacs 18.59 users. Please install the file
advice.el only if you want to run an emacs 18.?? !!!
Otherwise this file may cause trouble. TkEmacs
must be able to find these lisp files automatically.
- The file cl.elc from the standard distribution of
emacs 18.59 seems to have problems. Please replace
it with a (local) new byte compiled version. If you
have problems with compiling cl.el, simply remove
the compiled version. This way you are using the
uncompiled version. This has no negative effects.
- If you run Lucid emacs, you cannot use the default
executable name TkEmacs for this emacs. You have
to specify "-command lemacs" as the TkEmacs widget
option. So if you want to use lemacs with TkEmacs
(although I don't see why you should :-), you have
to change the string manually:
if {[catch "tkEmacs .frame.text -command TkEmacs -lispfile...
to
if {[catch "tkEmacs .frame.text -command lemacs -lispfile...
in the file tkEmacs.tcl.
- To disable the menubar of the current versions of
emacs, please add the "correct" code to your startup
code, or uncomment the "correct" code in the
tkemacs.el file.
The only major problem is that sometimes, you only get an empty toplevel, and/or hear a beep. In this case, one of the following points might help you:
1) Did you remove cl.elc (emacs 18.59) ?
- in the shell, you type:
emacs
- in emacs, you type:
M-x describe-variable
load-path
- then, you get the current contents of the
load path. Now look if you can find cl.elc
in one of these directories. If you do,
one of the previous directories must
contain "cl.el".
2) Did you install the new wish under the name steal-wish ?
- in the shell, you type:
steal-wish
- you get a running wish.
3) Did you install the new wish library files in the
Tk library directory ?
- in the shell, you type:
steal-wish
- in wish, you type:
tkEmacs .t
- if that command fails with an:
invalid command name "tkEmacs"
you have probably forgotten to install the
library file, or you have not adapted the
tclIndex file in the Tk library directory.
4) Did you provide a emacs named TKEmacs ?
- in the shell, you type:
TkEmacs
- you get a running emacs.
5) Did you install the emacs lisp files where emacs can find
them ?
- call emacs from the commandline as follows:
emacs -l tkemacs.el
there should be no error message (of course :-).
6) Did you really build an "X" emacs ?
- probably, you did not uncomment
HAVE_X_WINDOWS, so your emacs shows up in
the xterm where you started TkEmacs.
7) Did you really build an emacs with socket support ?
- probably, you did not define HAVE_SOCKETS,
so your emacs does not know the lisp
command "open-network-stream".
8) Did you apply/install all changes to wish correctly ?
- in the shell, you type:
steal-wish
- in wish, you type:
wm geometry . 500x500
tkEmacs .t
pack .t -expand 1 -fill both
- the command returns .t, and the toplevel
window contains an emacs.
9) A non-working wish can be caused by not including
a communication package into Tk, when building
the patched wish.
10) A non-working TkEmacs widget can be caused by a
not correctly adapted CB_LOAD_PATH or WISH_CMD
variable in the tkemacs.sh file.
11) When terminating emacs from inside of emacs it
can happen that you get the message:
"Active processes exist; kill them and exit anyway? (yes or no)"
this is because the function 'save-buffers-kill-emacs' is
called before the tk-kill-emacs-hook is called. So the
communication is still open. I see no way to work around
this problem (without changing the emacs lisp code). Maybe
someone knows a simple solution ?!
12) If you get a message about the max-lisp-eval-depth
you have probably installed the file advice.el for
a new emacs version (something newer than emacs 18.59).
Please remove this file.
13) If your emacs does not show up in the Tk widget after
some time (either diappears completely, or stays on
the main window), you may have to play around with
the reparenting level. The problem is that the authors
of emacs and xemacs change the internal window structure
from time to time, and also one version of emacs can have
different window structures depending on the way the
menubar is made. Emacs can return the window id of
the editor window, but this is not the window that has
to be reparented. It is the parent or the parent of the
parent that has to be embedded (depends on the version).
In the file tk-funcs.el search for the string
"reparenting". This should bring you to a comment
followed by a piece of code that starts with
"(defconst tk-emacs-type....". Uncomment this code, and
set the value to something else (just play around with
the various possible values and see which one is working).
14) Embedding an xterm window with tkSteal.tcl does not
work. When you call xterm with the -e parameter to
run a command in xterm, you have to call xterm with
the -T option to give xterm the "correct" name.
15) The current release of Tcl-DP (3.3b1) is not working
for me. TkEmacs never starts communicating... I don't
know whether this is a problem with emacs, tcl-dp or
my code. If somebody can help or knows something about
problems woth Tcl-DP under Linux please let me know.
There are several known problems with TkSteal: - If you are using -width and -height to set the geometry of the tkSteal widget, and get a locked server or a X server error about insufficient memory, your embedded application may use a grid for its geometry. In this case setting the widget geometry to something like 500x400 will result in a "real" geometry of something like 5000x5000. Just set the geometry to the correct gridded value (e.g. for xterm something like "-width 25 -height 80").
- If your embedded application is not resized beyond
a certain size when you resize the tkSteal widget
you should try to increase the initial size of the
embedded application (at the applications
commandline). I don't know why this happens (must
be some WM thing I do not know).
We tried to keep the changes to Tk and emacs as small as possible (smaller than for the old version of TkEmacs). The changes to Tk only add a new command to Tk (xaccess(n)). If you don't use the new command, you will not notice any changes compared to the standard wish. You no longer have to apply any changes to emacs or other programs that should be embedded.
The basic concept of this widget is that the main window of the embedded application is reparent to a Tk widget. Certain events passed to the Tk window are passed to the reparented window (like configure events etc.).
Apart from these mechanisms for passing X11 events, there are additional features to pass informations (like access to X properties, TCP connections).
General: - If the widgets do not work as expected under the new wish, maybe you have forgotten to adapt the TK_LIBRARY path in the Makefile, or you have not created the new TK_LIBRARY path with all Tk library files.
- If you have installed the Tcl/Tk related libraries
in non standard directories (i.e. directories that
are not automatically searched by the linker), you
have to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH
to contain these additional directories.
- Under MWM, it is not possible to place a window
(namely the window of the application to be
embedded) outside the visible area. So please
don't play around with this temporarily appearing
window. It will get reparented quite soon, and
playing around with it may cause X11 errors.
- The current release of Tcl-DP (3.3b1) is not working
for me. TkEmacs never starts communicating... I don't
know whether this is a problem with emacs, tcl-dp or
my code. If somebody can help or knows something about
problems woth Tcl-DP under Linux please let me know.
- I started implementing the communication with tkEmacs
via the new Tcl 7.5 "socket" command. Unfortunately it
seems like emacs cannot talk to a socket opened with
the Tcl "socket" command. If someone knows what happens
there please let me know.
OSF: - It seems that the command "sed" (which is used by GNU's configure package) accepts no long commandline strings (at least not long enough for this configure program). The error message you get will look about like this:
"Too many commands, last: s%@srcdir@%.%g"
Please install the GNU sed package, and use this "sed"
command (make sure the new sed is found before the
original sed).
Extended Tcl: - If you build the wish with extended Tcl, you have to set the TCL_LIBRARY path to the extended Tcl library path before you call the new wish.
The TkSteal distribution file is named TkSteal4.0*.tar.gz or TkSteal4.0*.tar.Z. The * represents the current version. TkSteal is available via anonymous ftp at: ftp.aud.alcatel.com: tcl/extensions/ ftp.ibp.fr: pub/tcl/contrib/extensions/ nic.funet.fi: pub/languages/tcl/extensions/ syd.dit.csiro.au: pub/tk/contrib/extensions/ ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de: pub/tcl/contrib/extensions/
To get a copy of it, just type the following:
ftp ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de
bin
cd pub/tcl/contrib/extensions
get TkSteal4.0*.tar.gz
To get a copy via ftpmail, just send the following mail to:
To get a help message, send the following body:
send HELP
end
To retrieve TkSteal, send the following body:
send pub/tcl/contrib/extensions/TkSteal4.0*.tar.gz
end
Sven Delmas [email protected] Juergen Nickelsen (Please no feedback!)
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