Tk - Definition and Overview

This article is about the Tk widget toolkit in computing. Tk is also

• an abbreviation used in journalism to indicate "to come" or forthcoming.
• the ISO country code for the islands of Tokelau (TK).
• the ISO language code for the Turkmen language (tk).

In computing, Tk is an open source, cross-platform widget toolkit, that is, a library of basic elements for building a graphical user interface (GUI).

Tk was developed by John Ousterhout as an extension for the Tcl scripting language. Through so called "bindings", Tk can be used under other languages, such as Perl, Python, and Ruby. Perl/Tk is probably more widely used than Tcl/Tk; on Unix systems, "man Tk" brings up the documentation of Perl/Tk.

Tk has been ported to run on most flavors of Linux, Apple Macintosh, Unix, and Windows. Since Tcl/Tk 8, it offers "native look and feel" (for instance, a menubar is placed differently on the Mac than under Windows or Linux/X11).

Like Tcl, Tk fully supports unicode.

External links

Generic Tk and Tcl/Tk:

• Tcl and Tk website (http://www.tcl.tk/)
• Tk commands (http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.3/TkCmd/contents.htm), on the Tcl/Tk website
• Tcl/Tk Tutorial (http://www.geocities.com/binnyva/code/tcl/tutorial/index.html)
• Tcl/Tk cookbook (http://www.dci.clrc.ac.uk/Publications/Cookbook/)

Perl/Tk:

• Perl/Tk manual (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/site/lib/Tk.html), hosted by Activestate
• Abridged Perl/Tk Tutorial (http://www.geocities.com/binnyva/code/perl/perl_tk_tutorial/index.html)

Ruby/Tk:

• Ruby/Tk (http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ext_tk.html), a chapter in The Ruby book
• Ruby/Tk demos (http://www.havenrock.com/developer/ruby-tk/), a zip archive