Tycho FAQ

The information below is covered in the Tycho documentation, we present it here in a slightly different format.

Table of Contents

  • 1. General
  • 1.1 What Is Tycho?
  • 1.2 What features does Tycho have?
  • 1.3 What Is Itcl?
  • 1.4 What is Ptolemy?
  • 1.5 Who was Tycho Brahe?
  • 2. Installation questions
  • 2.1 How do I download Tycho?
  • 2.2 What platforms does Tycho run under?
  • 2.3 What do I need to Install Tycho?
  • 2.4 Troubleshooting
  • 3. Why didn't you . . .
  • 3.1 Why didn't you just use Emacs?
  • 3.2 Why didn't you use the Iwidgets widgets?
  • 3.3 Why didn't you use Java?

  • 1. General

    1.1 What Is Tycho?
    At first glance, Tycho is a extensible Itcl development environment. We are developing Tycho to use it as a GUI for the Ptolemy Project. Tycho is a work in progress, but others my find it useful as is.
    1.2 What features does Tycho have?
    Tycho Feature include
  • Itcl graphical class browser.
  • Integrated HTML-based documentation system, including automatic generation of HTML documentation from Itcl files.
  • A canvas interface with grouped objects.
  • An Emacs-like syntax-sensitive text editors (with considerably more than the Tk text widget).
  • Tcl/Itcl interactive shell.
  • Widget library, including:
  • file browser
  • spell checker (Unix only)
  • font selector
  • preference system (partially constructed)
  • index browser
  • configurable dialog widgets
  • interface to RCS and SCCS version control (Unix only)
  • simple color browser
  • HTML-formatted message widgets
  • error handler with stack trace display
  • graph display with auto-layout for directed acyclic graphs
  • tree structure display with collapsible subtrees
  • bubble and arc graph editor
  • interface to glimpse (Unix only)
  • Base classes and widgets for construction of other applications:
  • view/displayer architecture
  • font manager
  • menu bar
  • status bar
  • tool bar
  • subpanel
  • file system interface
  • text editor widget
  • 1.6 What Is Itcl?
    Itcl is short hand for [incr Tcl]which is an object oriented version of the Tool Command Language (tcl). Tcl was written by John Ousterhout, now at Scriptics, Itcl was written by Michael McLennan of Lucent. For more information about Itcl, including a PostScript tutorial, see the Itcl homepage at http://www.tcltk.com.
    1.7 What is Ptolemy?
    Ptolemy is a software package that is used to design signal processing and communications systems, ranging from designing and simulating algorithms to synthesizing hardware and software, parallelizing algorithms, and prototyping real-time systems.

    Ptolemy is written in C++, and uses Tcl/Tk and the X Window System. See http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu for further information.

    1.8 Who was Tycho Brahe?
    Tycho Brahe was an astronomer, the Tycho documentation includes a brief biography.

    2. Installation questions

    2.1 How do I download Tycho?
    http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/tycho/Tycho.html has instructions and Itcl binaries.
    2.2 What platforms does Tycho run under?
    We do our development work under Solaris2.5.1, and we've tested Tycho under HPUX10.20. Tycho should work under any Unix platform that Itcl runs under.

    We have also used Windows NT to develop Tycho, but some of the features that use exec are broken.

    The Macintosh port requires Itcl2.2p2, the prebuilt Itcl2.2 binaries will not work. The Macintosh port is basically untested.

    2.3 What do I need to Install Tycho?
  • Tycho 0.2.1 uses Itcl2.2
  • You can download Itcl2.2 Windows binaries from http://www.tcltk.com
  • Solaris2, SunOs and HPUX 10.x binaries can be obtained from http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/tycho
  • On the Macintosh, Tycho 0.2.1 requires Itcl2.2p2.
  • 2.4 Troubleshooting
    The Tycho Troubleshooting guide has a few hints.

    You might find useful information on the Tycho homepage at http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/tycho.

    If you are really stumped, you can send mail to tycho@eecs.berkeley.edu. Your mail should include:

    1. What version of Tycho you are running.
    2. What platform you are running under (Solaris, Windows etc.)
    3. Exactly how to reproduce the bug.
    4. A Tcl backtrace, if appropriate.

    3. Why didn't you . . .

    3.1 Why didn't you just use Emacs?
    FSF Emacs is not particularly graphical, though Xemacs is better. We want to be able to have active graphical widgets intermingled with text.
    3.2 Why didn't you use the Iwidgets widgets everywhere?
    Tycho uses a different model for mapping widgets to the screen. In particular, widgets are completely constructed, and then actively mapped to the screen. Unlike Iwidgets, which map partially constructed widgets, Tycho widgets can be centered on the screen and sized according to screen dimensions. We could not find a way to use Iwidgets without sacrificing these features.

    This was a design decision made by the Tycho authors. In some cases, we decided to use a simpler widget. In other cases the functionality we needed was missing. We also wanted the widget we wrote to use some of the features of Tycho, such as automatically generated documentation and active Tcl examples.

    3.3 Why didn't you use Java?
    When we started Tycho, Java was still very new. Currently, we don't know of a good canvas like Java class like the Tk canvas. We'd rather not reinvent the wheel here and write our own Java canvas.

    Also, we wanted to be able to provide an easily extensible environment for non-programmers, which makes an interpreted language such as Tcl a stronger candidate than a compiled language such as Java.

    Tycho Home Page


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    Last updated: 06/07/98, comments to: tycho@eecs.berkeley.edu