The jstools package is a suite of applications based on a common set of libraries. The applications share a set of libraries, so they have a consistent look¡and¡feel. They are extensively customisable, both through startup scripts and through a preferences mechanism. They are written in wish(1), an X Windows scripting language based on the Tk toolkit and the Tcl scripting library (all three by John Ousterhout of Sun Microsystems).
This document describes version 3.6/3.0 of the jstools package.
Compatibility
Version 3.6/3.0 of the libraries is compatible with Tk 3.6p1 and Tcl 7.3; it may work properly with other versions, but then again, it might not.
There's a bug in unpatched Tk 3.6 that causes wish(1) to die with a core dump under certain circumstances; you should apply the official patch to Tk, which is available with the Tk sources on the official Tk distribution sites.
There were focus¡related bugs in Tk 4.0b2 (the second beta release) which caused the jstools applications (and some others) to crash frequently; later versions of Tk probably will not suffer from this problem.
Applications
The jstools package currently includes the following chief applications:
jabbrevs - an abbreviation manager (used by jedit)
jbrowser - a directory browser
jdoc - a documentation viewer, which you are presumably using to read this
jedit - a multi¡mode, multi¡window text editor
jmore - a file viewer, essentially a graphical analogue to more(1)
jprefs - a tool to set preferences shared by the jstools applications
The jedit editor can also be embedded in other Tk applications (and jmore and jprefs are really just wrappers around library procedures, so they can as well). I hope to add this capability to the other applications in the future.
There are also a few toy or demonstration applications distributed as part of jstools. Some of these are applications that aren't yet robust or functional enough to be considered production¡quality, but which I intend to further develop; others are simply proof¡of¡concept or special¡purpose hacks. These include:
jcalendar - a tool to edit and print calendar data in xcalendar(1) format
jhotlist - a tool to manage NCSA Mosaic (version 2.4 or earlier) hotlists
jlaunchpad - a menu of applications and remote hosts, similar to SGI's toolchest.
jmsgs - a graphical analogue to the Berkeley msgs(1) command
jnewbrowser - a preview of the appearance of the next version of jbrowser
jpeople - an address¡list and email alias manager
jperson - a command¡line interface to the jpeople database
Also, the jhelp application is distributed for backwards¡compatibility with the documentation format I used in previous releases of jstools, although the documentation for this release is in jdoc format.
Usage
Assuming jstools has been installed normally at your site, you shouldn't need to do anything special to use the applications, beyond making sure they're in your PATH. However, you can set the environment variable JSTOOLS_LIB to specify the directory that holds the jstools libraries. (This is normally /usr/local/jstools/lib or a location chosen by the person who installed jstools at your site.) You may want to do this if you have jstools in your own home directory for personal use, or to test jstools out before installing it.
For information about installing jstools, see XXX SOME DOC XXX. For specific information on using or invoking particular applications, see the documentation for the individual application (referenced above under Applications).
(here I'd talk about setting JSTOOLS_LIB and your path. maybe installation)
Credits and Copyright
Author
Jay Sekora
js@bu.edu
http://shore.net/~js/
Copyright
The jstools distribution (applications, libraries, and support files) is copyright ⌐ 1992-1994 by Jay Sekora, but may be freely copied and modified for non¡commercial purposes. (Please contact me if you want to use it for a commercial purpose, this may be OK under some circumstances.)
Thanks
Most importantly, I'd like to thank John Ousterhout <ouster@tcl.eng.sun.com>, the author of Tk and Tcl, for providing such a wonderful, robust, simple language for writing X Windows applications, and the Tcl community which has helped extend Tk and Tcl without forcing them to succumb to feature bloat.
In many places in the libraries, I've borrowed code from other people (with permission); they're mentioned in the documentation files for the individual libraries and in comments in the code itself.
Preferences
The jstools applications (and other applications written with the jstools libraries) share a set of global preferences. These preferences can be set from within jstools applications through the Global Preferences panel, or with the jprefs application, (which is just a wrapper around the Global Preferences panel). Most jstools applications also provide application¡specific preferences which can be set with an application¡specific preferences panel.
Global preferences are saved in the file ~/.tk/defaults, which is in the standard X Windows resource format. (For more information on this format, see X(1), particularly the section RESOURCES, and option(n), particularly the section on option readfile.) Most jstools applications save their application¡specific preferences in the same format in the file ~/.tk/application-defaults, where application is the name of the particular application, but some may save them someplace else and/or in some other format.
Evolution
Feel free to report bugs (and feature requests) to me, <js@bu.edu>, and I will try to deal with them. Also, feel free to fix bugs or add features on your own and let me know how you did it.
Changes
The jstools package has changed extensively since version 3.6/2.0. One significant change is that the libraries are now all autoloaded, rather than being explicitly sourced. Another major change is that a lot of the application¡specific code in jedit and jdoc (nΘ jhelp) has moved into libraries. (This improves start¡up time, and improves the modularity of the applications. It also makes it easier to share code among applications, and in the case of jedit it makes the functionality of the application embeddable in other Tk¡based applications without starting a separate process.)
The keybindings have been improved, and the vi keybindings are new.
Future Directions
* I intend to move more code from other applications into separate libraries.
* I intend to make jdoc (at least, and perhaps other applications as well) embeddable.
* I hope to overhaul the Preferences mechanism. I'd like to have some system similar to that in Brent Welch's exmh application, where preferences are organised into categories. I'd like a central preference panel to list the categories, and for each application to be able to add categories, instead of having separate global and application¡specific panels. Also, I'd like to add an interface for editing all the standard Tk appearance resources, as described in options(n), so users don't have to edit defaults files by hand to adjust fonts, colours, relief options, etc.
* I'd like to add a notecard¡browser application, for typing and searching through lots of short notes - an electronic card file.
* I'd like to add a basic sketching program. (It would be nice if drawings created by it could be included in jedit documents.)
* I'd like to have some of the applications dynamically communicate among each other. For instance, as soon as you add an abbreviation with jabbrevs, it should be available in all your jedit sessions. Global preferences you change in one application should be reflected in all your running jstools applications. And perhaps various applications could communicate among each other to decide where to put their windows, so windows overlap as little as possible.
