Rapid Application Development Using the Tcl/Tk Language

Abstract

During the last year high level applications at CEBAF were written using the Tcl/Tk scripting language [1]. This language is rapidly gaining in popularity, in part due to the ease of constructing programs with X11 graphical user interfaces, and in part due to the ease of adding compiled user code for specialized purposes. Extensions to the language provide object oriented programming [2], [3], which was used to develop a hierarchy of classes relevant for high level accelerator control. We describe the basic language features, some 3rd party addon packages, and local additions to the toolbox. Next we describe the features of the accelerator object hierarchy, and finally describe applications written using this toolbox such as the ModelServer prototype, Slow Orbit and Energy Lock, the Linac Energy Management System, and other applications. I. Introduction Tcl is an interpreted scripting language with only one data type: strings. The language is not intended for number crunching but ra..