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                     Stand-alone Tix Applications

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INTRODUCTION

  Traditionally, Tcl/Tk and its extensions require an extensive set of

  run-time scripts. These scripts are usually stored as

  /usr/local/lib//*.tcl. When a Tcl/Tk executable starts up,

  it looks for the scripts in the /usr/local directory, or as defined

  by enviornment variables such as TCL_LIBRARY or TIX_LIBRARY.

  The need of an external script library sometimes causes problems

  because users may need to keep track of their TCL_LIBRARY environment

  variables. Also, it is quite difficult to distribute a Tcl

  executable to a customer's site if the customer's machines don't

  already have Tcl installed.

  One solution of this problem is to compile stand-alone versions

  Tcl/Tk application. The scripts can be compiled into into the

  application executable, or into shared libraries which are linked

  into the executable. The distrution of a monolithic executable, or

  one executable with several shared libraries, is substantially

  easier than the distribution of many Tcl scripts scattered around in

  differenr directories.

COMPILING STAND-ALONE TIX

  Currently Tix supports standalone modules only for Tcl version 7.5

  and 7.6 on Unix. Read the file docs/UnixInst.html first before

  reading the rest of this section.

  To exable Tix stand-alone module, change into a Unix build directory

  and run the configure script with the --enable-sam option. Then, run

  "make". When "make" finishes, you will get several libraries and

  executables (the names may vary depending on the version of Tcl and

  the Unix platform):

        libtix4.1.7.6.so        Standard Tix shared library.

        tixwish                 Standard Tix shell.

        libtixsam4.1.7.6.so     Tix SAM library.

        libtksam4.2.so          Tk Sam library.

        libtclsam7.6.so         Tcl Sam library.

        satixwish               Stand-alone Tix shell

        sawish                  Stand-alone Tk shell

        satclsh                 Stand-alone Tcl shell

DISTRIBUTING satixwish

   satixwish is linked to the following libraries

        libtixsam               Tix c code and scripts

        libtksam                Tk scripts.

        libtk                   Tk c code

        libtclsam               Tcl scripts

        libtcl                  Tcl c code.

   If you would like to distribute satixwish, you should include the

   satixwish executable, the five shared libraries and your

   application's Tcl scripts. There is no need to include the Tcl, Tk

   and Tix script libraries.

DYNAMICALLY LOADING TIX SAM

   You can also dynamically load libtixsam into a running wish. If you

   have properly installed Tix, you can execute the command

        package require -exact Tixsam [tixBinVer 4.1]

   If Tix has not been installed in your system, you can still use the

   "load" command to dynamically load Tixsam:

        load [file join $dir \

            libtixsam[tixBinVer 4.1][info sharedlibextension]] \

            Tixsam

   See the file docs/Pkg.txt for discussions on the tixBinVer

   procedure and dynamic loading of Tix.

USING TIX WITH EMBEDDED TK

  Embedded Tk (ET) is another popular package for creating stand-alone

  Tcl/Tk applications. Older versions of Tix used to support

  ET. However, the scripts of this version of Tix cannot be compiled

  by the et2c program. If you want to use Tix in an ET-enabled

  application, you should link libtixsam with your application and

  call Tixsam_Init() to initialize the stand-alone Tix module. See the

  directory demos/et for an example.