CERN Accelerating science

PAWtcl for Windows/NT

  M.Ballintijn, J.J.Bunn, O.Couet, N.Cremel and P.Lecointe CN/ASD I.Gaponenko BINP, Russia

The next release of the CERN Program Library in Spring 1996 will contain the first version of PAW for Windows/NT and '95 . This version uses Tk/Tcl

as the user interface, and has been generated using the KUIP2TCL package described in this Newsletter (see section ).

This is a beta release for which we are seeking comments and suggestions from the user community.

The port is based on the TkNT distribution from Berkeley, which offers a fairly complete implementation of the windowing shell ``wish '' for NT , and which includes an X compatibility library based on X11R3. (The more recent ``official'' Tk/Tcl

for Windows/NT , released by Sun Microsystems, was not used since it provides many fewer X functions.) PAWtcl was built using the Microsoft Fortran PowerStation 4.0 and Visual C++ 4.0 compilers (currently under beta test), with a complete 32-bit build of the component packages HBOOK, COMIS, HPLOT, HIGZ, MINUIT, KERNLIB, MATHLIB and ZEBRA. It is of note that, to build PAWtcl, only one line of the standard PAW code had to be changed.

PAWtcl runs as a Console application with the same command syntax as standard PAW. Several changes and additions to the standard behaviour are, however, worth noting:

1)

The KUIP macro language is replaced by the Tcl shell, which is fully described in the book ``Tcl and the Tk Toolkit'' by John K. Ousterhout, which is available for purchase in the UCO.

2)

PAWtcl is initialised by a Tcl script that can easily be customized, but which in its basic form takes care of PAW command matching, default HIGZ widget creation (see below), parsing Help commands, and so on,

3)

HIGZ has been fully integrated into the tk environment via a ``higz widget''. A default PAWtcl widget is initialised which contains a HIGZ widget in which all PAW graphics are drawn. Many HIGZ widgets can be created using the ``higz '' command, for example:

 higz .myhigz
 pack .myhigz
 sel .myhigz

This allows simultaneous displays of several HIGZ graphics windows,

4)

The new Query Processor (described in section ) replaces the old processor, which is not available in this version.

5)

A new help command is available (described in section ),

6)

A new command ``debug '' is available which toggles details of the command line parsing and parameter assignments,

7)

The HBOOK KUIP macros $HEXIST and $HINFO have been replaced by new Tcl commands ``hexist '' and ``hinfo '' respectively, e.g.

 Paw> if [hexist 100] {
 % puts ``Mean = [hinfo 100 mean]'' }
 Mean = 1.000000e+000

Although all PAW commands can be typed at the PAWtcl prompt, there are some limitations:

1)

KUIP macros must be converted to Tcl syntax and invoked using ``source myexec.tcl '', for example.

2)

Options must be typed in the correct position: the option=value syntax is not understood.

3)

There is no control_C handling.

4)

The ``APPLICATION name QUIT '' interface is not yet supported (although the COMIS shell is available).

5)

The PAW ``set '' command, which clashes with the Tcl command of the same name, must be invoked using ``graphics/set '', e.g. ``gr/set STAT ''.

If there is sufficient interest in PAWtcl, then we will release versions for Unix and VMS later in 1996.