Tutorials

October 19 - 23, 2015

Comfort Suites Manassas
Manassas, Virginia, USA
7350 Williamson Blvd, 20109
Phone: +1 703 686 1100
Fax: +1 703 686 1128


One of the best reasons to attend the Tcl conference is the tutorial track. These sessions are presented by Tcl experts - people who write the packages, write the books, and develop applications on a daily basis. They share their knowledge of Tcl/Tk and the practical experience in developing large, robust applications. Whether you're new to Tcl or experienced, these sessions will help you develop your projects more quickly.

Free Tutorials

This year we are offering FREE tutorials Monday and Tuesday evenings. These will be 1-2 hour lectures on special topics. Anyone is welcome to attend the evening lectures, whether they are a member of the conference or not.

Tutorial schedule

Morning Afternoon Evening
Monday Advanced Tcl: TclOO Intro Advanced TclOO & Megawidgets in TclOO
Introduction to Tcl 1 Introduction to Tcl 2
Tuesday New Tcl/Tk Platforms — Pi and Android Tcl Certification Test
Introduction to Tk 1 Programming the Web with Tcl: A Survey of Tools, Tips and Tricks

Tutorial Information

Advanced Tcl: TclOO Intro — Clif Flynt

Required: Basic knowledge of Tcl

Tcl 8.6 makes TclOO the standard Object Oriented language for Tcl.

Clif will describe the basics of OO:

  • How to construct classes and objects
  • How/When to use inheritance, mixins
  • Object methods and object variables.
  • Class methods and class variables.
  • Class morphing

New Tcl/Tk Platforms — Pi and Android — Clif Flynt

Required: Basic of knowledge Tcl and Tk

You can do neat things with a Raspberry Pi and Tcl.

You can also do neat things with the new AndroWish for Androids

Find out what some of them are.

The focus will be on the new commands and extensions that support these cool platforms.

Introduction to Tcl 1 — Gerald Lester

Required: Knowledge of basic programming concepts. No previous experience with Tcl required.

This course gives you all the knowledge you need to produce useful Tcl scripts, as well serving as a framework for exploring more advanced features of Tcl. We'll explore basic Tcl syntax and commands, string processing, data structure manipulation, basic process interaction, and file handling.

Introduction to Tcl 2 — Gerald Lester

Required: Knowledge of basic programming concepts and very basic Tcl.

This course gives you all the knowledge you need to produce useful Tcl scripts, as well serving as a framework for exploring more advanced features of Tcl. We'll explore basic Tcl syntax and commands, string processing, data structure manipulation, basic process interaction, and file handling.

Introduction to Tk 1 — Gerald Lester

Required: Basic knowledge of Tcl.

With remarkably little code, you can add a full-featured GUI to your application that will have a platform-native appearance on Windows, Unix, and Macintosh. In this course we'll explore all the Tk interface components, learn how to modify and extend their behaviors, and see how to put them together into complex multi-window applications.

Programming the Web with Tcl: A Survey of Tools, Tips and Tricks — Gerald Lester

Required: Attendees should have knowledge of Tcl programming including the event driven paradigm.

A survey of existing tools and techniques at the disposal of the Tcl programmer for Web applications.

This tutorial will look at the various tools and techniques at the disposal of the Tcl programmer for use on both the client and server of Web applications. This tutorial is a survey of those items and will not go into great depth on each tool and/or technique covered. The survey will range from low level use of the socket to HTTP request using JSON to higher level interfaces using Web Services for Tcl and the OData Client for Tcl.

Attendees of this tutorial should walk away with an appreciating and understanding of

  1. The tools available to the Tcl programmer
  2. When they are suitable to be employed
  3. When and how to extend and/or combine the tools to meet their needs

This tutorial is not a web design or content management course — although some of the tools covered could be combined to create such a system.

Advanced TclOO & Megawidgets in TclOO — Sean Woods

Required: Basic knowledge of Tcl and TclOO

Advanced TclOO

Sean will discuss how to extend TclOO to produce application frameworks. Included in this course will be property tracking, option handling, message passing, factory models, and objects which swap class during processing. The course will introduce the "Tao" framework, but the lessons will be applicable to any project which uses TclOO.

Megawidgets in TclOO

Sean will build upon the framework in "Advanced TclOO" to produce a megawidget framework in TclOO. Included in this course will be API design, implementing model/view/controller in Tk, signal pipelines, and building canvas content with drawing layers. The course will introduce the "TaoTk" framework, but the lessons will be applicable to any project which uses TclOO and Tk.

Tcl Certification Test — Tcl Community Association

Required: Basic knowledge of Tcl and Tk

One chance to get a Tcl/Tk Basic Certification cheaply. Details are still being ironed out. You will need to register at the conference to take the test.

Contact information

tclconference@googlegroups.com