From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Dec 1 00:47:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id AAA21067 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:47:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from mother.sneaker.net.au (root@mother.sneaker.net.au [203.30.3.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA21056 for ; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:47:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from akm@mother.sneaker.net.au) Received: (from akm@localhost) by mother.sneaker.net.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA23965; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 19:40:13 +1100 (EST) From: Andrew Kenneth Milton Message-Id: <199712010840.TAA23965@mother.sneaker.net.au> Subject: Re: Out of Box experience (Was: Re: How is selection made of what goes into CDrom?) To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 19:40:13 +1100 (EST) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, garbanzo@hooked.net, nectar@NECTAR.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199712010758.SAA01430@word.smith.net.au> from "Mike Smith" at Dec 1, 97 06:28:36 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk +-----[ Mike Smith ]------------------------------ | | > Don't forget there's also a curses version of Tk which does a fair | > job. The SCO (boo hiss) system tool works this way, if you run it from | > a console it uses the curses version, otherwise you get the pretty | > X one. So your development of a dual-mode sysinstall using Tk would | > (almost) fall out for free. | | ... only Visual Tcl (the tool you are thinking of) is proprietary and | not available. I think that Karl L. and friends spent a long time on | vtcl for a *very* good reason. We don't have those resources. Errr no. There is a pd/freeware curses tk implementation out there that isn't vtcl. ctk.. it's in the ports. I know about Visual Tcl, I meant to use SCO as an example of something that has dual modes. I have actually used it on a Tk thing I wrote, to see what it looked like on a console. It doesn't do too bad a job. There are obviously somethings that aren't going to work like pretty logos and iconic displays (which are overrated anyway IMHO). I'm not saying it's *the* solution, I'm just saying there's stuff out there that could possibly make life easier. I've seen an (S)VGA graphics library that converts stuff to ANSI on the fly (not too badly either) so there are all sorts of weird packages out there. (*shudder* ANSI doom). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This package contains CTk, a curses port of John Ousterhout's Tk toolkit for X11. Using CTk, applications with a modern GUI-ish interface can be created for character terminals. These same applications, without modification, can provide a real GUI interface by using Tk. Thus, sites with an embedded base of character terminals (and a small capital budget) can smoothly migrate to GUI applications. -- ,-_|\ SneakerNet | Andrew Milton | GSM: +61(41)6 022 411 / \ P.O. Box 154 | akm@sneaker.net.au | Fax: +61(2) 9746 8233 \_,-._/ N Strathfield +--+----------------------+---+ Ph: +61(2) 9746 8233 v NSW 2137 | Low cost Internet Solutions |