Tk Web Browsers

"Are there tcl/tk scripts for reading web pages?" The answer is that there are many different resources, from one-liners to sophisticated full powered applications. There are a lot of features and preferences, and some limitations that the user might consider as they get started.

Most of these are pretty simple, so the feature lists here is mostly a wish/todo list. The basic features a browser usually provides are html rendering, url following and local hardrive file loading.

Some features to look for are:

Here is a listing of some resources.


 What:  [Alphatk] (the 'www' menu)
 Where: http://www.santafe.edu/%7Evince/Alphatk.html
        ftp://ftp.ucsd.edu/pub/alpha/tcl/alphatk/
 Description: Shareware Tcl/Tk based text editor useful for programmers
        or someone writing TeX/LaTeX or HTML source files.
        The www menu provides text-only web browsing with link colouring, source viewing, frames, limited applet support, and full i18n features.  Also user-friendly editing of Wiki pages from within Alphatk.
        Designed to run on Windows or Unix platforms, providing functionality
        equivalent to Pete Keleher's Alpha editor for MacOS.
        Requires Tcl/Tk 8.1.1 or newer.
        Runs on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, XP, Solaris, Linux, MacOS X.
        This is release v8.1.
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: vince
 Contact: mailto:[email protected]


 Description: One-line web browser in Tcl.
 Location: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/2464
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 Description: Simple Tkhtml web page displayer
 Location: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/2993
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 What: tkHTML
 Where: http://www.cobaltgroup.com/%7Eroland/tkHTML/ ????
        ftp://ftp.cobaltgroup.com/pub/liem/tkHTML/source/tkHTML-3.21.tar.gz
        http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/packages/infosystems/WWW/tools/editing/unix/tkhtml/
 Description: Simple HTML editor for X.  It has both menu and keystroke
        oriented commands to make editing and converting documents to
        HTML easier.  Current beta provides Tk 4 support.
        tkHTML 3.2 is the current release with Tk 4.2 and Tix 4.1 support.
        Uses Netscape and Mosaic for previewing - no longer requires wwwish.
 Updated: 01/1999
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Liem Bahneman)

 What: Scout
 Where: http://www.sanmay.freeserve.co.uk/
 Description: WWW browser which uses tkhtml .
 Updated: 08/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected]

 Description: tclXML tools
 Location: http://tclxml.sourceforge.net/
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 Description: Plume (100% tcl/tk) web browser
 Location: ftp://ftp.tcl.tk/pub/tcl/mirror/ftp.procplace.com/sorted/apps/plume-0.6.2/
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 What: Plume
 Where: http://www.zveno.com/open_source/plume.html (Link not found!)
        ftp://ftp.tcl.tk/pub/tcl/mirror/ftp.procplace.com/sorted/packages-7.6/apps/plume-0.6.2/plume-0.6.2.tar.gz
        http://www.glinx.com/%7Ehclsmith/tcltk/plume/ ??? (Link not found!)
 Description: Tcl/Tk WorldWideWeb (WWW) browser.
        Supports HTML v1.0 and v2.0, along with a subset of HTML v3.0
        tables.  Goal is for it to be completely v3.0 compliant.  Handles
        inline GIF (including transparent GIFs), PPM, and X bitmap images.
        Supports older Tcl applets using Jacob Levy's Safe-Tcl extension.
        Runs with Tcl/Tk 8.0b1.  Dynamically loads tclX and
        BLT extensions.  Supports CMT's cmplayer.
        Note that this program contains a module (prot.tcl) to handle
        the HTTP 1.0 protocol. Includes an HTML megawidget which has
        table support.  Support for XML documents and tcl based DTDs is
        also available.  Also contains Safe-Tk code.
 Updated: 08/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Steve Ball)

 Description: HelpSystem is a Tk/tcl based html help displayer
 Location: http://midc.miem.edu.ru/HelpSystem/
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 Description:  Web Browser for Agenda VR3 written in Tcl/Tk
 Location: http://www.psnw.com/~alcald/tiny_tcl_web_browser.html
 Updated: 03/2002
 Updated by: sag

 What: Agenda port of Tcl/Tk
 Where: http://www.desertscenes.net/agenda/
        http://www.medmapper.com/root-snow-1.0.1-tcl-web-email.cramfs
        http://developer.agendacomputing.com/
 Description: Port of Tcl/Tk to the Linux powered Agenda PDA.
        Tcl/Tk/Tcl++/html_lbirary/tclmail/etc. have been ported.
        A Tcl based WWW browser was written.
 Updated: 09/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Alexander Caldwell)

 What: LAPIS
 Where: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ercm/lapis/
 Description: LAPIS (Lightweight Architecture for Processing Information
        Structure) is a tool for lightweight structured text processing.
        It is a web browser which can highlight and manipulate regions of
        text.
        Written in Java, I have been told that the authors have done
        some work with Tcl using the Jacl interpreter.
 Updated: 02/2000
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Rob Miller)

 What: Netscape client Tcl Tclet (Schelter)
 Where: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/netmath/demo/demo.html
 Description: Netmath is a web browser with built in plotting facilities
        and interface to computation engines.
 Updated: 06/1999
 Contact: mailto:[email protected]

 What: orinoco
 Where: ftp://catless.ncl.ac.uk/pub/orinoco-1.0-pre-alpha.tar.gz (???)
 Description: Tcl/Tk WML browser.
 Updated: 08/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Lindsay F. Marshall)

(Piotr Zaprawa) email from LM:

 Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 16:12:08 +0100
 From: Lindsay Marshall <[email protected]>
 To: xxx
 Subject: RE: orinoco flow...

 Sorry, I stopped work on that years ago - wml is a complete dead end!

 L.

Phoenix


 What: Quill
 Where: http://www.glinx.com/%7Ehclsmith/tcltk/quill/ ???
        http://www.glinx.com/%7Ehclsmith/tcltk/quill/quill-0.14.tar.gz ???
 Description: Mostly Tcl/Tk WWW browser.
 Updated: 12/1999
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Hume Smith)

tkWWW


 What: tkWorld
 Where: Currently Unknown >>> found on ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl   June 2002
 Description: Wes's Own Really Lazy Desktop provides a Tk interface to popular
        Unix commands.
        Each application's interface has a command center, toolbar and log
        window.  Currently these applications are developed:
        tkFind, tkGrep, tkMake, as well as chmod, mkdir, ps, and rmdir ,
        as well as built in dir, ls, and cd commands as well as a number of
        other std Unix commands,
        tkLB (a little HTML browser),
        tkREM (a regular expression maker),
        tkSort (a GUI interface to Unix sort),
        tkWinstall (GUI install tool, used to install/deinstall tkWorld)
        Software is released under the GNU General Public License.
        Currently at v1.4.0.
 Updated: 10/1998
 Contact: Wes Bailey - address currently unknown

 What: Wafe
 Where: http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/wafe/wafe.html
        http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/wafe/www/wafe-packages.html
                http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/wafe/wafe.html
                ftp://ftp.wu-wien.ac.at/pub/src/X11/wafe/1.0.19/
                ftp://ftp.wu-wien.ac.at/pub/src/X11/wafe/1.0.19/wafe-1.0.19.tar.gz
                ftp://ftp.wu-wien.ac.at/pub/src/X11/wafe/Xaw3d-1.3.2-src.tar.gz
                http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/wafe/Cineast/video.html
        http://www.inria.fr/koala/jml/jml.html
 Description: Tcl binding to Xt and various widget sets like Athena (Xaw3d),
        OSF/Motif (1.1 to 2.0), and others.  At the above FTP site are
        many other associated tar files, such as Linux binaries, Xaw3d,
        documentation, etc.  Wafe can be used as a frontend for programs
        in abitrary programming languages (there are many example programs
        written in Perl contained in the package). As of version v1.0.18
        Wafe supports the Kino widget class, Mosaic HTML widget, plotter
        widgets, XmGraph widget, Layout widget, tree widget, XbaeMatrix
        widget, Ghostview widget, Eurobridge widget, analog clock widget,
        most of the FWF widget classes, libWWW, LDAP library and more.
        Wafe supports graphic formats such as XBM, XPM, GIF, JPEG,
        and PNG.  Various object oriented Tcl extensions such as OTcl
        or itcl are also supported.  SSLEAY is supported.  Available in
        RedHat's .rpm format.  The current version
        supports Tcl 8.0, SSL streams, the choice of Tcl
        or Xt event loop, as well as a number of new modules.  Package
        includes cineast, an extensible WWW browser, written using Otcl
        and Wafe.  Other sample applications, such as htmlEdit, cpu-bars,
        gsv, pinger, xwafemail, etc. are also included.
        In version v1.0.19, Tcl_Objects are supported, UTF support when
        used with Tcl 8.1, Knvas widgets, Kino-2 widgets.
 Updated: 06/1998
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (WaFE mailing list)

 What: WebTk
 Where: https://www.tcl-lang.org/software/webtk/
 Description: A Tk HTML editor and browser.  It requires Tk 4.1 (FCS) or
        greater.  There are packages for Unix, Macintosh, and Windows.
        The editor supports forms, but not tables and frames.
        Provides end-user extensibility and customization.  You can
        copy and paste text, links and images from live pages from the
        web using WebTk's browser features.  You can also
        chart and validate links on pages.
        This beta release is free for a 90 day evaluation period.
 Updated: 03/2001
 Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Brent Welch)

TV The files aren't there, I think there has been free version which I liked.


 What:  htmlview.tcl: A simple HTML viewer
 Where: http://www.msen.com/~clif/HtmlView.html
 Description: The htmlview.tcl program will open a window on your display, 
        and render html text from a file or stdin. It's a small, simple
        html viewer that can be used with elm, pine, etc for reading
        text/html messages. The Version 1 htmlview.tcl program will
        display the text in a message, but does not load images from
        the web, or support any hypertext links. It's strictly a
        viewer. The Version 2 htmlview.tcl will download images when
        the image tag is clicked, and will load hypertext references
        when clicked.
 Updated: 01/2000
 Contact: mailto:[email protected]

More generally, see https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/2?browser

TkGecko and NewzPoint deserve mention, as does the "One-line web browser in Tcl". Which was the first Tk Web browser? It was quite early ...


SurfIt! is a World Wide Web user agent (aka browser) which has been implemented entirely using Tcl/Tk script code. It supports most of the features usually found in Web browsers today - document retrieval using the HTTP protocol, graphical display of HTML documents, inline graphics, hypertext navigation, and so on. SurfIt! also includes many standard browser features such as local caching of documents, incremental document loading and display and concurrent document downloading. As a Tk application, it is easy to construct applications which can communicate with SurfIt!, using the send command, to implement the concept of hypertools. SurfIt! provides direct support for creating tools such as these.

  • HTML v2.0 (RFC 1866) compliant.
  • partial implementation of HTML v3.2 Raggett96c.
  • partial implementation of TABLE draft specification Raggett96a.
  • GIF, PPM and X bitmap graphics formats supported and may be inlined. Support for JPEG graphics format has been prototyped, but requires a robust photo image type format handler.
  • Network protocol handlers for HTTP v1.0 and FTP. file: and mailto: URLs are also supported.
  • Asynchronous, concurrent document downloading with incremental document display.
  • .mailcap processing for "Helper Applications".

Tcl'96 paper: [L1 ]

Available at: [L2 ]