10.46.1.5 Outline of This Tutorial

Now we have motivated using Tcl/Tk as a means of creating GUIs for Prolog programs, this document goes into the details of using Tcl/Tk as a means of building GUIs for SICStus Prolog applications.

Firstly, Tcl is introduced and its syntax and core commands described. Then the Tk extensions to Tcl are introduced. We show how with Tcl and Tk together the user can build sophisticated GUIs easily and quickly. At the end of this Tcl/Tk part of the tutorial an example of a pure Tcl/Tk program will be presented together with some tips on how to design and code Tcl/Tk GUIs.

The second phase of this document describes the SICStus Prolog tcltk library. It provides extensions to Prolog that allow Prolog applications to interact with Tcl/Tk: Prolog can make calls to Tcl/Tk code and vice versa.

Having reached this point in the tutorial the user will know how to write a Tcl/Tk GUI interface and how to get a Prolog program to interact with it, but arranging which process (the Prolog process or the Tcl/Tk process) is the dominant partner is non-trivial and so is described in a separate chapter on event handling. This will help the user choose the most appropriate method of cooperation between Tcl/Tk and Prolog to suit their particular application.

This section, the Tcl/Tk+Prolog section, will be rounded off with the presentation of some example applications that make use of Tcl/Tk and Prolog.

Then there is a short discussion section on how to use other Tcl extension packages with Tcl/Tk and Prolog. Many such extension packages have been written and when added to Prolog enhanced with Tcl/Tk can offer further functionality to a Prolog application.

The appendices provide a full listing with description of the predicates available in the tcltk SICStus Prolog library, and the extensions made to Tcl/Tk for interacting with Prolog.

Lastly, a section on resources gives pointers to where the reader can find more information on Tcl/Tk.