Tix Frequently Asked Questions

Table of Contents

Legal Issues

General Questions About Using The Tix Library

Question About Porting to Specific Platforms/Software

Porting from Tix 3.6 to Tix 4.0

Trivia


Legal Issues

[L.1] I am developing a commercial application, can I use Tix 4.0?

ANSWER: Yes. The legal and copyright status of Tix is exactly the same as that of TK (with only one catch, see [2]). If you are bold enough to use TK in your commercial app, you should be able to use Tix for free.

[L.2] I am developing a commercial GUI builder, something like zApp, can I use Tix 4.0?

ANSWER: You can use every aspect of Tix except the tixForm geometry manager (please read the file LEGAL.html ). That means, for example, your product can include the TixComboBox and other widgets. However, TixForm, including the TCL command, the C library code or the documentation, cannot be included into your product at all. You are also explicitly prohibited form examining, imitating, copying, reverse-enrgineering or otherwise using the file tixForm.c.

[L.3] Can I use tixForm in my commercial app which is not a GUI builder.

ANSWER: Yes.

[L.4] I am writing a free GUI builder, can I use tixForm in it?

ANSWER: Yes, provided you distributed your GUI builder freely. That means it should be no less free than at least one of the following:
  1. GNU Public License
  2. "Berkeley" type license.

[L.5] Will future versions of Tix be free?

ANSWER: I don't have much control over this. The availability of future versions (i.e., beyond the final release of Tix 4.0) can be affected by many reasons. However, Tix 4.0 will be kept freely distributed for its lifetime or mine, whichever is longer.


General Questions About Using The Tix Library

[G.1] What does the "-disablecallback" option do?

ANSWER: Many Tix widgets have both a -value option and a -command option. Any modification of the -value will cause the -command callback to be executed. Sometimes this is undesirable. For example, calling "config -value" inside the callback procedure will cause the callback to be re-entered and thus an infinite recursion.

The -disablecallback can be used to advoid this problem. When this option is set, the -command callback will not be executed even if the -value of a widget is changed. Therefore, if you need to modify the -value of a widget inside its callback, do this:

    proc my_callback {w} {
	$w config -disablecallback true
	$w config value blah
	$w config -disablecallback false
    }
    
If you find this too troublesome, you can call the command tixSetSilent:
    proc my_callback {w} {
	tixSetSilent $w blah
    }
    

[G.2] How do I set the width of the entry subwidget inside the tixControl widget?

ANSWER: You can use the option database or the -options flag to set the configuration options of the subwidgets. E.g:

option add *TixControl*entry.width 10
OR
tixControl .c -options {
   entry.width  10
}

[G.3] What is the "setslient" method?

ANSWER: This is an obsolete method. You could use it to achieve the same effect as the -disablecallback option. selsilent used to be a widget command for the ComboBox, Control, etc. It has been removed since Tix 4.0a4 and replaced by the tixSetSilent command. Please note that tixSetSilent is not a widget command but an external procedure.

[G.4] Is there a Tix interface builder in the works?

ANSWER: Yes. But I don't know when it will be finished. (probably in 96).

[G.5] Can you tell me about the syntax of tixForm

ANSWER: Please see the file man/Form.html or man/Form.n.

[G.6] I am not using the tixForm geometry manager, but it is giving me errors about TixForm. What happened?

ANSWER: When you get error messages like this:
 (TixForm) Error:Trying to use more than one geometry
           manager for the same master window.
           Giving up after 50 iterations.
Most likely, the problem is when using tixLabelFrame widgets, you packed to the wrong frame:

This is WRONG:

   tixLabelFrame .d
        button .d.b
        pack .d.b 
This is the correct way:
   tixLabelFrame .d
        set f [.d subwidget frame]
        button $f.b
        pack $f.b
        pack .d 
Remember you don't pack directly into a TixLabelFrame widget. Instead, you should pack into its frame subwidget.

[G.7] How do I generate the tclIndex file for Tix?

ANSWER: Tix tclIndex files cannot be generated using the standard auto_mkindex procedure. You must use the tixindex program in the tools/ subdirectory in the Tix distribution. The syntax is
 tixindex *.tcl
    

[G.8] Can I ignore the default arguments passed by the various -command and -broeswcmd options?

ANSWER: You can use the tixBreak command. For example:
 tixFileSelectDialog .c -command "puts foo; tixBreak" 

[G.9] What does tixWidgetDoWhenIdle do?

ANSWER: It does the same thing as tixDoWhileIdle (and "after -idle"). The difference is it takes its second argument as the name of a widget and executes this command only if the widget exists: i.e.:
  tixWidgetDoWhenIdle tixComboBox::Update $w blah blah ..
will execute tixComboBox::Update only if $w exists. $w may be destroyed after tixWidgetDoWhenIdle is called but before an idle event happens.


Question About Porting to Specific Platforms/Software

[P.1] The configure script gave me strange errors.

ANSWER: The problem may be you have several operating systems sharing the same file system. Some people encounter error messages like this:
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/vendor/tcl
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/installbsd -c
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking how to run the C preprocessor... cc -E
checking for unistd.h... ./configure[603]: "${ac_cv_header_$ac_safe+set}": bad
substitution
The problem is at line 2, configure loaded in ./config.cache, which may have been created by a different operating system, with settings only usuable for that operating system. To get around this, you should type
make distclean
./configure
make all

[P.2] Is there an MS Windows version of Tix?

ANSWER: My plan is to make the next major release of Tix (4.1) available under MS Windows. The projected date is the first quarter of 1996.

For Tix 4.0, From Mike Bridge (mb@las.com) :

There's a relatively complete port done by Gordon Chaffee for tkNT which is at roger-rabbit.cs.berkeley.edu:/pub/winnt.

[P.3] Does Tix 4.0 work with Tk 4.1a?

ANSWER: Yes, just enable the "Tk 4.1 ..." option in the setup program. It will also compile Tix in a dynamic lobrary.

[P.4] Does Tix work with Incr Tcl 2.0?

ANSWER: Yes just enable the "Itcl 2.0 ..." option in the setup program. Make sure you have ITcl 2.0 installed. Beta versions will *NOT* work. Also make sure you have installed the source tree of ITcl 2.0 in the same directory where you install the Tix source tree.

[P.5] How do I get Tix to work with Expect?

ANSWER: From Paul Schmidt (kuato@netcom.com):
I have integrated Tcl7.4, Tk4.0, Expect-5.19 and Tix4.0 on Linux 1.2.13 (ELF) and Solaris 2.4. It isn't too hard. For an expectk+Tix binary you need to add a call to Tix_Init in exp_main_tk.c. If you can find the call to Tk_Init then just cut&paste and replace it with Tix_Init. Do the same if you want a Tk+Tix window shell in TkAppInit.c. Worked like a charm. If you have any problems just holler.

[P.6] Solaris 2.4: Filenames in FileSelectBox are chopped off.

ANSWER: Problem:
With Tix4.0a7 (and also with Tix4.0a6) on Solaris 2.4, when running the widget demo, in tixFileSelectBox, in the two scolling lists (for Files an Directories), some of the file and directory names have their first 2 letters chopped off. And some files are repeated.
Solution: tixwish has some conflicts with /usr/ucblib/libucb.so.1 and you should not linke it tixwish (you don't need it). Here is a solution provided by Charles L Ditzel (charles@hanami.cyberspace.com):
To fix the problem I was having, all I did was:
   unsetenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   set my PATH to something basic like:
     /usr/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/bin:/usr/openwin/bin:/opt/SUNWspro/bin
   removed config.cache
   ./configure
   make clean
   make
    
and now it works!! Must have been something in my old PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH that was causing it to pick up /usr/ucblib/libucb.so.

[P.7] Do I still need libXpm?

ANSWER: No, now Tix has its own XPM file reader. You no longer need libXpm.

[P.8] I get a coredump as soon as tixwish starts up.

ANSWER: Try to get a backtrace of the stack when the core dump happens (with a debugger, for example). If the core dump happens right inside the call to Tk_ConfigureWidget() inside the file tixInit.c, then the problem is because you compiled libtk.a and libtix.a with different versions of the Th header file tk.h. Delete all the .o files from the src directory of Tix, fix the Makefile so that now you can compile libtix.a with the same tk.h that you used to compile libtk.a.


Porting from Tix 3.6 to Tix 4.0

[X.1] What happened to the tixInit command?

ANSWER: You don't need to use it anymore. It is provided in Tix 4.0 only for backward compatibility.

[X.2] How do I set the schemes and fontsets in Tix 4.0?

ANSWER: You can set the color schemes and fontsets using the standard X resource database (.Xdefaults file). You can add these two lines in the user's .Xdefaults file:

	*TixScheme:   Gray
	*TixFontSet:  14Point 
If you want to switch color schemes and fontsets during run time, you can issue the following commands:
	tix config -scheme Gray -fontset 14Point
    
Please read the tix manual page for more details

[X.3] How do I choose the default TK color schemes and fontsets? Tix is messing up the colors of my existing programs.

ANSWER: Add these two lines in your .Xdefaults:

	*TixScheme:   TK
	*TixFontSet:  TK 

[X.4] I want the old bisque look of Tk 3.6. tk_bisque doesn't work.

ANSWER: The Tix widgets are not compatible with tk_bisque. If you want a bisque-ish look you can add to your .Xdefaults file the following line:
	*TixScheme:   Bisque


Trivia

[T.1] How do you pronunce "Ioi"

ANSWER: You take the first "I" as a "Y" : so it goes like "Yoi"

[T.2] How on earth did you pick such a name

ANSWER: Well, I didn't pick it myself. Nor did my parents. I was born in China and then my family moved to Macao, which was under a Portugese government. So they made a transliteration of my Chinese name into Portugese. And since there isn't the character "Y" in Portugese, they were forced name me using a symmetrical binary string.


Last modified Mar 3 23:21