NOTICE

ET is no longer being actively developed. For new development work, please consider using mktclapp instead of ET.

Embedded Tk

Embedded Tk or ``ET'' is tool for making stand-alone executables out of a mixture of C or C++ and Tcl/Tk. Using ET you can invoke a short Tcl/Tk script in the middle of a C routine, or you can invoke a C routine in the middle of a Tcl/Tk script. ET also bundles external Tcl/Tk scripts (including the standard Tcl/Tk startup scripts) into the executable so that the executable can be run on another binary-compatible computer that doesn't have Tcl/Tk installed.

As of version 1.6b3, ET will now generate executables for Windows3.1, Windows95 and WindowsNT when used together with Tk4.1. Additional information can be found in the README file that is part of the 1.6b3 and later distributions.

Beginning with version 8.0, the ET version numbers now track the corresponding Tcl/Tk version numbers.

The following is available:

The latest documentation for ET is available as postscript (241115 bytes), or plain ASCII Text (62570 bytes). You can also browse the documentation as online HTML.
Version 1.2d of ET is the last version in which the example programs worked with Tcl/Tk version 3.6. (146331 bytes.)
The most recent version of ET is version 8.0b6 (228426 bytes). The examples in this version work with versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and 8.0 of the Tcl/Tk libraries. The distribution comes with complete documentation.
A listing of all files available for download, including older versions of ET.

Cross References

Other web pages that deal with Tcl/Tk extensions (besides ET) include:

Several Pure Tk Widgets, including a Tree widget and a tabbed Notebook widget are also available on this web site.
The Sun Microsystems web pages on Tcl/Tk. The Scriptics web pages.
The Tcl Consortium is a non-profit organization promoting the use of Tcl/Tk.
Jan Nijtmans' Home Page contains several very useful Tcl/Tk packages. There you can find the Plus Patches which allow you to build a standalone executable out of a pure Tcl/Tk script. The plus patches are more convenient to use than ET if you don't need to mix C or C++ with your Tcl/Tk.
Information on Ioi Kim Lam's Tix toolkit extensions to Tcl/Tk. Ioi used to bundle ET with Tix, so if you have an older copy of Tix you'll also have an older copy of ET. Ioi stopped bundling ET some time ago. I don't know why.
The original Tcl extension is Expect.
NeoSoft offers commercial support and training for Tcl/Tk, and hosts the Tcl/Tk archives.
The best way to experiment with Tcl/Tk and to construct an application interactively is using Jeffrey Hobbs' TkConsole.

This page was last updated on May 25, 1998

For additional information, send e-mail to the author at drh@acm.org.