1. Wize Frequently Asked Questions
2. General
2.1 What is Wize?
Wize is a reasonably complete GUI development and deployment
environment for Linux and Windows. It is based on
enhanced versions of Tcl/Tk and BLT.
For more details see What Is Wize
2.2 What License does Wize use?
BSD
2.3 Where can I get Wize from?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wize/.
See Getting Wize for details.
2.4 How is Wize different from vanilla Tcl/Tk?
Wize implements many desirable
features missing from Tck/Tk.
In particular, it integrates a highly modified BLT
with other extensions.
Virtually all widgets now support tiling of backgrounds and/or items.
Wize also provides builtin Validation via the
-Wall option.
See Features for more detail.
2.5 How does Wize differ from TclKit?
Wize uses sqlite as it's database and
the zip archive format exclusively for packaging.
All this is in addition to the above.
2.6 What is a wizapp?
A wizapp is simply a .zip archive
containing a main.tcl which
launches the Tcl application.
2.7 Can a .zip (wizapp) be invoked as an OS command?
Yes. Wize can use soft links to indirectly
run a .zip file,
just as you would a normal compiled command or script.
On invocation Wize checks if this was
via a soft link, and if so looks for
a .zip whose name is the same as the link.
For example, if foo.zip is in the Wize directory
and there is a link foo -> wize
then invoking foo runs wize, which mounts foo.zip
and sources it's main.tcl.
To create a link for this use: wize / install foo.zip.
Note this will require write access to the directory containing wize.
2.8 What are wizpaks?
In short they are add-ons.
2.9 How do I (re)build Wize?
If you can't run the binaries on sourceforge,
check the code out from CVS on http://sourceforge.net/projects/wize.
Then see wize2/wize/README.
Note, building for windows requires numerous (undocumented)
manual steps.
2.10 How can I modify or add builtin scripts to Wize?
Just unzip the wize binary
into a directory, do modifications and then re-zip back
up. If you don't have the unzip program, you can use
wize / Zip/Unzip etc, instead.
2.11 Why is the Wize executable so large (12-15 Meg)?
Current binary releases include debugging symbols.
You can eliminate the 5-8 Meg of symbols in one of two ways:
- Rebuild after setting DBGSYMS=0 in the Makefile.
- Use Zip/: Unzip, TruncZip, strip -g, then PiggyZip.
2.12 Is HTML supported?
Yes and No.
Tkhtml 3.0 is builtin to Wize. Thus it can be used to run the hv3 browser
via wize hv.zip. However,
Tkhtml 3.0 has a number of
known instabilities and thus is in a use at your own risk state.
Nevertheless, this could be acceptable for just browsing
local documentation.
2.13 Does wize support ttk:: widgets?
No, not currently. ttk was introduced after version Tcl 8.5a5
upon which Wize is based.
3. Usage
3.1 Where do I start?
Run wize /. (See Admin and DevStart)
3.2 Can I eval Tcl directly from the command-line?
Yes, like this:
wize /zvfs/wiz/eval.tcl 'pack [button .b -text "Hello World"]'
3.3 Can I run Ted directly from the command-line?
Sure, here are 3 different ways:
wize / Apps/Ted ...
wize /zvfs/app/ted/ted.tcl ...
wize ~/bin/wizapp.zip:ted/ted.tcl ...
3.4 How can I find a window.
Use Tk::find.
3.5 How can I setup a background image tile?
Use the -tile option. (See Widget Tile).
3.6 How do I get an input string?
See Inputs.
3.7 What extensions are supported?
© 2008 Peter MacDonald