Emacs Info Files for Tcl/Tk Manuals

Having failed to locate any Emacs Info files for the Tcl/Tk manuals, I decided to create them myself. So here they are - Unix man pages for John Ousterhout's Tcl/Tk in Emacs Info with extensive hypertext cross references. The Info files are directly converted from the HTML version, created by Roger E Critchlow Jr.

The compressed tar files can be downloaded here:

Tcl/Tk 7.6 Release: tcl7.6-info.tar.gz
Tcl/Tk 8.0 Release: tcl8.0-info.tar.gz
Tcl/Tk 8.1 Release: tcl8.1-info.tar.gz

These Info files are free to use. The legal stuff is described at the top of each Info file.

To install the Info files of a particular release, say 8.0,

download the compressed tar file tcl8.0-info.tar.gz to a local disk;
uncompress/untar it to either an existing Emacs Info directory, or a new one - in the latter case, make sure to update this variable, `Info-default-directory-list' in your .emacs file or some site setup file;

update the top level `dir' by including the following entries into the menu:

* UserCmd: (UserCmd.info).   Tcl/Tk 8.0 Applications: tclsh, wish
* TclCmd: (TclCmd.info).     Tcl 8.0 Commands: commands built into `tclsh'.
* TkCmd: (TkCmd.info).       Tk 8.0 Commands: additional commands built into `wish'
* TclLib: (TclLib.info).     Tcl 8.0 Library: C functions which a Tcl extended C program may use.
* TkLib: (TkLib.info).       Tk 8.0 Library: additional C functions which a Tk extended C program may use.
* Keywords: (Keywords.info). Tcl/Tk 8.0 Keywords

Note: If you are using the recent versions of XEmacs and you put the Info files in a directory which has no dir file, then XEmacs's Info will be able to automatically generate the info menu.

If you are interested in context-sensitive help for Tcl/Tk commands using tcl-mode in XEmacs, you can try the following simple elisp codes, which you can put in your .emacs file (Note: GNU Emacs seems to have a different tcl-mode. So I am not sure if this will work at all).


(require 'tcl)

(defun tcl-info (cmd)
  "Find Info for Tcl/Tk command CMD, default to word at point."
  (interactive
   (let* ((def (tcl-word-no-props))
	  (s (read-string 
		 (format "Find info for Tcl/Tk cmd (default %s): " 
			 def))))
     (list (if (equal s "") def s))))

  (let ((buf (current-buffer))
	(pool '("TclCmd" "TkCmd"))
	b2 f
	)

    (if (or (null cmd)
	    (equal cmd ""))
	(setq cmd "Top"))
	
    (while (setq f (pop pool))
      (condition-case msg
	  (progn
	    (Info-find-node f cmd t)
	    (pop-to-buffer (setq b2 (get-buffer "*info*")) t)
	    (pop-to-buffer buf)
	    (setq pool nil))
	(error 
	 (if pool
	     nil
	   (kill-buffer b2)
	   (beep)
	   (message "%s for Tcl/Tk cmd" (car (cdr msg)))
	   )))))
)

(defun tcl-info-at-point ()
  "Find Info for Tcl/Tk command at point"
  (interactive)
  (tcl-info (tcl-word-no-props))
)

(define-key tcl-mode-map 'f1 'tcl-info-at-point)

Jerry G. Chen
Last modified: Mon Aug 27 10:16:35 Cen 2001