ActiveState Community Site - Iwidgets Unavailable After Upgrade - Comments

ttk ifying iwidgets

jeffh — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:08:12 -0700

iwidgets is an older widget set that works, but is generally unmaintained. Widget sets that have Ttk support are bwidgets and tklib's widget modules.

ttk ifying iwidgets

beernut — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:01:50 -0700

Does anyone know if work is being done to ttkify iwidgets? Since iwidgets is written in pure itk and at its base uses regular tk widgets it shouldn't be impossible. I was going to try with some of my most used iwidgets like entryfield but didn't want to go about reinventing the wheel.

Mark

Re: finding support

lvirden — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:56:56 -0700

Finding extensions that are supported can be a tricky thing. Developers come and go in every community - whether open or closed source. The benefits in the open source is that you have the ability to take on support or at least the option to find someone who would, for the right "price", provide you some level of support.

I suspect that the recommendation regarding Iwidgets to which you refer was in a context where the idea was trying to be communicated that, while activetcl does provide the iwidgets megawidget set, the itcl community isn't currently a thriving active development hotbed. Maintenance fixes to the extension probably are going to occur if they turn up and are reported. But new features may not be seen quickly.

On the other hand, that is about the same situation with Bwidgets, Tix, BLT, and a number of other extensions.

There probably is someone out there who is actively developing megawidgets, adding new features, etc.

In your case, you are happy with the features in the extension. As long as it continues to build and work within the released Tcl/Tk environment, then your needs are being met. I don't know that there is necessarily a need yet for you to abandon Iwidgets.

Perhaps there will be a group of people who come together with a new megawidget framework, based around Ttk and TclOO and other efforts, that will begin working on a new set of widgets. If that effort begins, then suggestions from folks like yourself, who wouldn't mind switching if only the new set had a file selection box with features A, B, and C (where these are the features in the Iwidgets widget that you find attractive).

Then, once the new widget was coded, and debugging has occurred, you could look at the level of effort to switch over.

--
Tcl - the glue of a new generation. http://wiki.tcl.tk/
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
be construed as representing my employer's opinions.

Thanks, "'teacup install

K31 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:15:34 -0800

Thanks, "'teacup install Iwidgets'" seems to have gotten me back Iwidgets but now it seems as if spindate is broken. When I change the month with the arrows, the day goes blank and so does field in the bound variable.

That doesn't bother me so much because spindate would be relatively easy to recreate using spinboxs.

In researching this problem, I came across a newsgroup article in which you advised someone not to use Iwidgets because they were not maintained and did not add the existing look and feel of the environment. I didn't know that when I began this application however.

I really do like the fileselectionbox however which I think would require much more work to recreate. I don't really care about the aesthetics. I am worried that I am creating an application that isn't supportable however since I'm using them in a tcl application to write a replacement for an app that's now no longer supportable. The Iwidgets are very attractive since they provide such a rich set of complex widgets it greatly cuts down on development.

Would you advise that I abandon Iwidgets and what would be the recommended choice to use in place of fileselectionbox?

Thanks.

Iwidgets Unavailable After Upgrade

jeffh — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:19:14 -0800

The first installer page of ActiveTcl 8.5 indicates that only a limited set of packages ship default with 8.5 and notes you can overinstall an 8.4 installation to use those packages, or use the teacup app provided.

Try 'teacup install Iwidgets' as an alternative.

Iwidgets Unavailable After Upgrade

K31 — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:04:02 -0800

I am developing an application using the Iwidgets Spindate and Fileselectionbox. I was using ActiveTCL version 8.4.15.0... and yesterday upgraded to 8.5.1.0... After I did this the application would not run at all and Windows launched a message screen asking if I wanted to submit a bug report. I uninstalled both 8.4 and 8.5 using the uninstall routines from the start menu. I then reinstalled 8.5. Now my program ends whenever it reaches a reference to Iwidgets.

I originally had a "package Iwidgets" statement in the code but I'm not sure if I added that originally because of Windows or Linux (I debug and run under both). However when I remove the "package" reference, the program halts when it reaches the first Iwidget reference.

I don't remember if I did something else originally to get the Iwidgets to work under Windows.

It seems from the description of the 8.5 distribution that Iwidgets is included.

Thanks.