From: larry@tweety.cs.berkeley.edu (Larry Rowe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: Periodic posting of the Tcl Commercial FAQ
Date: 18 Dec 1992 02:50:59 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley EECS Dept.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: larry@cs.Berkeley.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: tweety.cs.berkeley.edu

 Archive-name: tcl-commercial-faq
 Version: 1.0
 Last-modified: October 29, 1992

                       COMMERCIAL USE OF TCL/TK

This file contains brief descriptions of how Tcl/Tk is being used in
commercial products.  If you have questions about specific postings,
contact the person who made the submission directly.  The purpose of
this listing is to show that Tcl/Tk is being used in commercial products
and to discuss that use.

INDEX

0. Rumors and other miscellaneous...
1. Use of TCL/TK for Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications
2. CASE Tool Code Generation
3. End user graphical user interface application (presentation package)

Each posting is prefaced by a line with dashes so you can search to the
beginning of the next message.  

Please submit further postings to larry@CS.Berkeley.EDU.
---------------------------------
Several companies are using Tcl or Tcl/Tk in their products but
do not advertise that fact.  Some companies that do something but
I'm not sure what are SCO and NeoSoft.

In addition, numerous companies are using Tcl to automate regression
testing.  In essence, they are using the framework developed by folks
at Sun that is used to test the Tcl implementation.  Take a look at
the files in tcl/tests.
---------------------------------
ENTRY 1.
Usage: Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications
Company: Pacific Marketing and Communication, Berkeley CA
Contact: Wayne A. Christopher
Email: pmac!faustus@uunet.uu.net

P.M.A.C. is a small company that develops software for computational
fluid dynamics.  Our programs are used for generating meshes to
represent objects such as mechanical parts, which are used as input to
fluid flow solvers that typically run on supercomputers.

We have used TCL and TK for two products so far.  The first is a
"manager" or graphical shell that coordinates many other programs
that have different and often idiosyncratic interfaces, and presents a
unified view of the high-level data they manipulate.  This is a
natural task for TCL and TK, since it is very easy to add new programs
and options, and the simplicity of TCL makes it feasible to include
instructions for users to customize it for their own applications.

The second application is a grid and surface visualizer.  This allows
the user to view the grids generated by the system prior to the fluid
flow analysis step, and later, the results of the analysis.  The most
graphics-intensive section of the code, which involves calls to both X
and GL and must be able to store and render up to a million polyhedra,
was implemented as a special TK widget, but most of the other code,
including all user interface code, was written in TCL.

-----------------------------------
ENTRY 2.
Usage: CASE Tool Code Generation
Company: Westmount Technology BV, Holland
Contact: Eko Bousema
Email: ekbo@wmt.nl
US Subsidary: Westmount Inc, Boulder, CO 80302
Telephone: +1-303-4439733
Fax: +1-303-4439835

Products:
ISEE is an Open Integrated CASE tool for RDBMS and 4GL developers.
It supports Yourdon SA/SD including Dataflow Diagrams, Entity Relationship 
Diagrams and Structure Charts. Full code generation for database and 
3GL and 4GL applications is provided. Supported 4GL's include Ingres,
Informix and ACCELL/SQL.

TSEE  is a Open Integrated CASE tool for developers of technical systems.
It supports Yourdon SA/SD including Dataflow Diagrams, Entity Relationship 
Diagrams and Structure Charts.  Code can be generated for C and C with 
embedded SQL applications.


TCL/Tk:
The code generation is based on parsing diagrams and generating code
from that. This conversion is written in C++, the generation in Tcl.
The advantage of that is that user can adapt the codegeneration themself,
which is even more interesting because they can also extend the
diagram definitions.

We have extended Tcl with some features which converts diagrams
from the repository into an internal datastructure (model) which
can be accessed from within Tcl.
---------------------
ENTRY 3.
Usage: End user graphical user interface application (presentation package)
Company: Perspecta Software Inc., Berkeley CA
Contact: Carolyn Bonfield
Email: carbon@perspecta.com

Perspecta Presents! is a low-cost, full-function presentation package for 
Unix workstations running the X Window System.  The product integrates
word processing, color graphics, images, and presentation management
capabilities so users can create sophisticated full-color slides, 
viewgraphs, or on-line slide shows.

The product supports a variety of output options including 35mm slides,
viewgraphs, audience handouts with several slide images per page,
and speaker notes with a miniature slide image and presentation reminders.
It also supports all color and black/white postscript output devices including
printers and film recorders.

The use of Tcl/Tk to implement the program had many positive consequences.
First, the saved file format, undo/redo log which is also used for crash
recovery, and the data sent between applications via the X inter-client
communication protocol all use the same Tcl commands to represent items.

Second, it was very easy to develop the user interface, particularly when
numerous changes were required.

And third, it allows end users to modify the program in interesting ways.  
For example, one user changed the key bindings in the on-line slide show 
to take advantage of a lecture hall remote control device.  Another example, 
is that a user could create a Tcl/Tk program that can read a database
and create a new slide or modify the contents of an existing slide by sending
Tcl commands to Perspecta Presents!  Or, a program could control copies
of Perspecta Presents! simultaneously displaying an on-line slide show
on different machines at different sites on a network.

The product runs on all major UNIX workstations including Sun Sparcstations 
and compatibles, IBM RS6000s, HP PA-RISC, and DECStation 3100s and 5000s.

More information is available via email from info@perspecta.com or by 
phone on 1-800-648-3433.  A demonstration version can be accessed by FTP 
on the Internet at ftp.uu.net in the directory "vendor/perspecta".
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl,bnr.lang.tcl