Jim Tcl - News

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Sunday, 28 November 2021

Jim Tcl version 0.81

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.81

Jim Tcl 0.81 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.80

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.81

info complete - return 0 if the script is missing an end quote
sqlite3 - return integers as 64 bit values, not 32 bit

Features and improvements added in version 0.81

New redis client extension
expr - TIP 582 - support comments in expressions
Many commands now accept “safe” integer expressions rather than simple integers: loop, range, incr, string repeat, lrepeat, pack, unpack, rand
string and list indexes now accept “safe” integer expressions
loop can now omit the start value
New xtrace command for execution trace support
Add history keep
Add support for lsearch -index and lsearch -stride, the latter per TIP 351
lsort -index now supports multiple indices
Add support for lsort -stride
open now supports POSIX-style access arguments
sdl extension now supports SDL2, and basic text support is added as well as polling support
ABI version checking is now available to allow dynamic modules to verify they are loaded into a compatible interpreter

Possible incompatibilities in version 0.81

If the --compat configure option is not set, expr now only allows a single argument (per TIP 526)

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

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Saturday, 02 January 2021

SDL2 - Jim Tcl sdl extension update

Since the early days of Jim Tcl, the included sdl extension has provided an example of how to integrate an external library as a Jim Tcl extension.

However this extension had not been updated for some time, and did not support the newer SDL2 API.

Now the sdl extension has been updated to support both SDL and SDL2, and also includes some additional features.

Building the extension

configure uses pkg-config to find the required libraries, so be sure to have SDL2_gfx (and optionally SDL2_ttf) installed where pkg-config can find them.

$ pkg-config --modversion SDL2_gfx
1.0.2

Build the sdl extension as a module by specifying it at configure time.

$ ./configure --full --with-mod=sdl
...
Checking for SDL2_gfx ...1.0.2
Checking for SDL2_ttf ...2.0.15
Extension sdl...module
...
$ make
...
	CC	jim-sdl.o
	LDSO	sdl.so
...

Testing the extension

Some test scripts are available in the examples/ directory.

$ ./jimsh examples/sdltest.tcl

Jim-SDL sdltest

$ ./jimsh examples/sdlevents.tcl

Using the extension

Create a window (sdl screen) with the sdl.screen command

. package require sdl
1.0
. set s [sdl.screen 640 480 "Window Title"]
::sdl.surface4

The returned handle provides a number of subcommands. Help is available for each subcommand.

. $s -commands
free flip poll clear pixel circle aacircle fcircle rectangle box line aaline font text
. $s -help fcircle
Usage: ::sdl.surface4 fcircle x y radius red green blue ?alpha?
. $s fcircle 100 100 30 200 0 0
. $s flip

Colours in SDL use separate red, green and blue components. These are specified as integers from 0 to 255. Similarly, the alpha (opacity) is specified from 0 (transparent) to 255 (opaque).

The image commands are as follows:

clear - clear the entire window to the given colour
pixel - draw a single pixel
circle - draw a circle (outline)
aacircle - draw a circle (outline) with antialiasing
fcircle - draw a filled circle
rectangle - draw a rectangle (outline)
box - draw a filled rectangle
line - draw a line
aaline - draw a line with antialiasing

If the SDL2_ttf package is available, basic text support is also provided.

font - load a TrueType font from a file with the given point size
text - draw text with the currently loaded font

Some notes on text:

Only one font may be loaded at a time
The specified font may not support all unicode glyphs.
To display utf-8 text, Jim Tcl must have been built with –utf8

There are several non-drawing commands.

free - close the window and free the handle (the same as: rename $s "")
flip - update the window to match graphics changes, then clear the background buffer and poll for events
poll - update the window to match graphics changes, then poll for events

Note that the graphics window is double (or triple) buffered. This means that any graphics changes are not displayed until flip or poll is used. In general, you should display an entire frame and then call flip.

In order to keep the SDL window responsive, it is necessary to pump the SDL event loop. Both flip and poll can be used for this. Currently the only SDL event that is recognised is the SDL_QUIT event. When this event occurs, flip and poll return JIM_EXIT. By default, this will exit the interpreter.

A typical script that simply displays a single image will look like:

... draw the SDL image ...

$s poll { sleep 0.25 }

This will run the SDL event loop and then eval the given script. If SDL_QUIT is ever received, the script will exit.

See examples/sdlevents.tcl for an example of how to integrate the SDL event loop with the Jim Tcl event loop.

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

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Saturday, 31 October 2020

Jim Tcl version 0.80

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.80

Jim Tcl 0.80 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.79

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.80

return -level 0 -code xxx now returns the correct result
regexp - fix an issue with failed optional group
oo - fix an issue when no class variables are given
oo - fix super invocation with multiple inheritance levels
tailcall - fix to avoid growing the C stack frame
regsub -all with \A now works correctly
scan - fix an issue with chars vs bytes in utf-8 mode
aio - fix eventloop and eof for ssl connections
lsearch -regexp - fix the case where the pattern begins with a dash
lsearch -command - handle the case with too few args
Disallow renaming a local proc with upcall to avoid inconsistent behaviour

Features and improvements added in version 0.80

Dictionaries now preserve insertion order
string map and string compare now support embedded nulls
string match and other glob matches now support embedded nulls
Variable and proc names now support embedded nulls
Interactive mode now prints results containing embedded nulls
Generate a build warning if system is non-Y2038 compliant
package names added as an alias for package list
file rootname, file dirname are now more consistent with Tcl
aio - add Server Name Indication (SNI) ssl support
aio - add socket pty support
The 0d radix prefix is now supported for decimal (base 10)
String comparison operators lt, gt, le and ge are now supported
dict getwithdefault (and the alias dict getdef) are now supported
Build has coverage support, and test coverage is now over 90%
Performance improvements in a number of areas

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

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Monday, 03 February 2020

Move primary repo to github

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl is moving to github

As repo.or.cz has been down for some time, the mirror at github has now been designated as the primary repository.

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

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Wednesday, 20 November 2019

Jim Tcl version 0.79

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.79

Jim Tcl 0.79 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.78

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.79

aio - Fix closing stdin in bootstrap jimsh
clock scan - Unspecified fields use the current date/time
Fix linenoise assertion failure on Windows
file - Improved support for trailing slashes in pathnames
regexp, regsub - Various fixes in UTF-8 mode
$(...) syntax now properly returns non-error codes

Features added in version 0.78

file - Add mtimeus for microsecond resolution
file - Add missing split subcommand
lreplace - Implement TIP #505
aio - Add dgram unix socket support
aio - Add support for lock -wait
aio copyto - Significantly improve performance
aio tty - Allow setting echo
signal - Add block for blocking signals with SIG_IGN
Add built-in JSON support with the json extension
Improve performance when indexing UTF-8 strings

Other changes

Documentation updates to improve consistency, remove obsolete commands, add some missing commands
exec no longer forces SIGPIPE disposition to SIG_DFL
Update autosetup to v0.6.9 with optimised insert/delete

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

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Sunday, 01 July 2018