Re: [open-cobol-list] human input options WAS Intoducing myself.

[John R. Culleton]

On Wednesday 11 April 2007 16:52, Bill Klein wrote:
> John,
>   Just call me "ignorant" <G>.
>
> I have never heard of them (so this reflects on me), but can you
> tell me what the following are or where I can read about them?
>
>  - Tcl/TK,
>  - Rildo
>  - Expect
>
The only ignorant question is the one not asked :<)

Tcl is a very old scripting language still in very active use. They 
will hold their 14th annual conference this year. Tk is the gui 
addon, eaually well seasoned.  Tcl/Tk  has been ported to most 
platforms. It is effectively Open Source, though it antedates that 
term. Anyhow it is free. There is even a port of the Tk toolkit 
portion to Perl.  The "book" on Tcl/Tk is dated 1994 and was 
published by Addison Wesley.  

"Expect" is another Tcl addon that facilitates send-reply dialogues 
between Tcl/Tk and other programs. For example you can set it up so 
that it will send a message and wait for a certain reply, and then 
take specified action.  Other replies are ignored, or have their own 
action routines. It is handy for controlling programs such as 
terminal clients, password dialogues and so on.  You can talk to a 
Tcl/Tk program from a called COBOL program using ACCEPT/DISPLAY verbs 
on the COBOL side and send/expect verbs on the Tcl/Tk side. Expect is 
free on Linux but there may be a fee for the Windows version. 

As an alternative to "Expect" Rildo Pragana has managed to put the 
COBOL program on top, using a C language routine as middleware.  

O'Reilly has books on both products. There is the original book by the 
Tcl/Tk creator, John Ousterhout and a newer book by Welch, Jones and 
Hobbs. The book on "Exploring Expect" is by its creator, Don Libes.

Go to Amazon.com and key in Tcl/Tk  to get a feel for the 
documentation available.  It runs on all three platforms. Visit 
http://tcl.tk  (sic) for more info. 

Rildo Pragana is the name of the creator of that other free COBOL 
compiler that I am not supposed to mention on this list. He lives in 
Brazil and has had to abandon work on his compiler. But David Essex 
has picked up the reins to an extent.  Go to 
http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/index.php
for more information.

The closest analogue to Tcl is I suppose Perl or perhaps php. I love 
what it does, but hate the way it does it (true in all cases.) But 
the Tk addon is what makes Tcl truly useful. You can build some 
sophisticated screens with it.  
-- 
John Culleton
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