# The jstools Libraries

## Introduction

The jstools libraries are a collection of Tk/Tcl libraries used by the jstools applications, and distributed with the jstools package. They provide a variety of higherlevel facilities for constructing Tk and Tclbased applications, and provide consistency of appearance and behaviour across applications.

This document describes version 4.0/4.0 of the jstools libraries.

### Compatibility

Version 4.0/4.0b of the jstools libraries is compatible with Tk 4.0p1 and Tcl 7.4p1 or Tk 4.0p2 and Tcl 7.4p2; it may work properly with other versions, but then again, it might not. I have tested the jstools libraries lightly under Tk 3.6, and they appear to work.

There's a bug in unpatched Tk 3.6 that causes `wish`(1) to die with a core dump under certain circumstances; you should apply the official patch to Tk, which is available with the Tk sources on the official Tk distribution sites.

There were focusrelated bugs in Tk 4.0b2 (the second beta release) which caused the jstools applications (and some others) to crash frequently; later versions of Tk dowill not suffer from this problem. I think `j:dialogue` in particular tends to trigger this.

### Changes

See jstools changes since 3.6/3.0 for a change log (including pointers to earlier changes).

## Libraries

The libraries in the jstools package can be divided up by function as follows:

### Natural Language Database Support

This library lets your application look up strings it wants to display and present them in the user's preferred language. It's designed to be independent from the other jstools libraries, so it can be used alone. It's also fairly small.

jldb.tcl - localisation support for naturallanguage strings

### Utility Libraries

These libraries don't provide significant functionality that the enduser can see, but they are used by the other libraries, or provide convenience proedures to save a few lines of code in applications.

jdebug.tcl - debugging support

jfileio.tcl - convenience procedures for reading from and writing to files

jinit.tcl - the common jstools initialisation sequence

jparseargs.tcl - procedures for parsing procedure and application arguments

jprefixmatch.tcl - filename expansion and abbreviation matching procedures

jprefs.tcl - general routines for loading, saving, and using preferences

(see also jprefpanel.tcl)

jstools.tcl - miscellaneous procedures shared by jstools applications

jtkutils.tcl - convenience procedures and userinterface layout support

jtclutils.tcl - convenience procedures that don't require Tk

jtkversion.tcl - procedures for writing code compatible with both Tk 3 and Tk 4

jviewers.tcl - show manual pages or URLs with the user's preferred tools

### Compound Widgets and Widget Wrappers

These libraries enhance the functionality of an existing Tk widget by providing a wrapper around it, or provide new widgetlike entities with new functionality.

jmetawidgets.tcl - compound widgets including a colour chooser

joptionbutton.tcl - a button that lets the user choose one of several options

jtext.tcl - wrappers around the text widget's widget command

### Popup Panels

These libraries provide popup panels or dialogue boxes of various kinds. Except for the find panel provided by jfindpanel.tcl and the text display panel provided by jmore.tcl, these panels are modal.

jabout.tcl - richtext about panels

(see also jrichtext.tcl)

jalert.tcl - popup notification panels

jconfirm.tcl - a panel asking the user to confirm actions

jfindpanel.tcl - a searchandreplace panel for the text widget

jfs.tcl - a fileselector panel

jmore.tcl - a textdisplay panel

jprefpanel.tcl - a preference panel for setting shared jstools preferences

jprompts.tcl - procedures to ask the user for various kinds of information

### Procedures for Managing UserVisible Commands

The procedures in jcommand.tcl make managing uservisible commands (i.e., commands the user would give to your application, e.g. by clicking on a button or choosing a menu entry) easier. Those in jmenu.tcl let you construct menus of those commands, as well as other kinds of menus, without a lot of typing.

jcommand.tcl - procedures to manage user-invokable commands

jmenu.tcl - procedures to manage menus

### Procedures for Using Tagged Text

These procedures let you and your users use, type, load, and save tagged text, which may display multiple fonts or colours or include hypertext. The jtagconvert.tcl library provides a way of converting multifont text in a text widget into other richtext formats.

jrichtext.tcl - procedures to embed rich text in Tk applications

jtagconvert.tcl - procedures for saving multifont text in various formats

jtexttags.tcl - extensive support for working with tagged text

(see also jtext.tcl)

### Bindings Libraries

These libraries manage keyboard (and mouse) bindings for text and entry widgets. Together with the preferences libraries, they let the user choose among `basic' bindings (more complete than the standard Tk 3.6 bindings), Emacs bindings, and `vi` bindings. They depend on jtext.tcl, and support jtexttags.tcl if you're using it.

Currently, only jbindentry.tcl, jbindtext.tcl, jcompose.tcl, and jlatin1.tcl are documented at all, and they aren't documented very thoroughly. However, the others are not intended to be called directly; they're called by the libraries mentioned above.

jbindentry.tcl - several userselected styles of entry bindings

jbindtext.tcl - several userselected styles of text bindings

(see also jtext.tcl)

jcompose.tcl - support for the Compose key

jentrybasic.tcl - support for minimalist bindings

jentryedt.tcl - rudimentary support for EDT bindings

jentryemacs.tcl - support for Emacsstyle entry bindings

jentrykeys.tcl - general support for entry keyboard bindings

jentrymouse.tcl - support for entry mouse bindings

jentryvi.tcl - support for vistyle entry bindings

jlatin1.tcl - additional support for the Compose key

jtextbasic.tcl - support for minimalist text bindings

jtextedt.tcl - rudimentary support for EDT bindings

jtextemacs.tcl - support for Emacsstyle text bindings

jtextkeys.tcl - support for text keyboard bindings

jtextmouse.tcl - support for text mouse bindings

jtextvi.tcl - support for vistyle text bindings

## Usage

If the jstools libraries have been installed normally at your site, you should be able to use them by making sure they're in your `auto_path` Tcl variable. The jstools applications also all support the convention of letting you override the default location of the jstools libraries by setting the environment variable `JSTOOLS_LIB`, and also let you override individual jstools libraries by copying them to your ~/.tk directory and modifying them. To accomplish all this, you should put the following code at or near the top of your `wish`(1) scripts:

`## begin boiler_header`

global VERSION

set VERSION {4.0/4.0b}

if {[info exists env(JSTOOLS_LIB)]} {

set jstools_library $env(JSTOOLS_LIB)

} else {

set jstools_library /usr/local/lib/jstools

}

# add the jstools library to the library search path:

set auto_path [concat [list $jstools_library] $auto_path]

# check for ~/.tk and prepend it to the auto_path

# if it exists. that way the user can override

# and customise the jstools libraries.

if {[file isdirectory ~/.tk]} then {

set auto_path [concat [list [glob ~/.tk]] $auto_path]

}

## end boiler_header

You should also call `j:jstools_init` early in your code; this reads in global (crossapplication) preferences, which are used by some of the other libraries, and automatically sets up bindings for entry and text widgets based on the user's preferences.

## Credits and Copyright

### Author

Jay Sekora

`js@calumet.org`

`http://shore.net/~js/`

### Copyright

The jstools distribution (applications, libraries, and support files) is copyright © 1992-1995 by Jay Sekora, but may be freely copied and modified for noncommercial purposes. (Please contact me if you want to use it for a commercial purpose, this may be OK under some circumstances.)

### Thanks

Most importantly, I'd like to thank John Ousterhout `<ouster@tcl.eng.sun.com>`, the author of Tk and Tcl, for providing such a wonderful, robust, simple language for writing X Windows applications, and the Tcl community which has helped extend Tk and Tcl without forcing them to succumb to feature bloat.

In many places in the libraries, I've borrowed code from other people (with permission); they're mentioned in the documentation files for the individual libraries and in comments in the code itself.

## Future Directions

Feel free to report bugs (and feature requests) to me, `<js@calumet.org>`, and I will try to deal with them. Also, feel free to fix bugs or add features on your own and let me know how you did it.

* I'd like to write a library for working with the contents of canvases (e.g. archiving and restoring them).

* I hope to overhaul the Preferences mechanism, which will probably involve new preferences libraries. See the jstools documentation for more about this.

* I'd like to add libraries for popup menus and/or gesture commands. (Actually, popup menu support is provided with Tk 4.0, but gesture commands would still be nice, and they could be combined - dragright could pop up a menu, and dragup could delete text, for instance.)

* I'd like to write a library for interapplication communication, to help tie the various applications more closely together. See the jstools documentation for more about this.

``