Toucan 1.2 (a feathered friend for the Palm)

Toucan is based on Tcl/Tk (of course!) and provides an environment for developing Palm Tcl applications using Tk widgets to give an approximate appearance to the Palm Forms interface. It is not a 100% perfect look-and-feel (at least with the initial versions), but it is sufficient for the user to design the Forms interface and create the Tcl scripts to glue them all together.

The intent is that once the Palm Tcl application is developed, the IDE will convert the relevant Forms interface elements into a resource script file and place the Tcl glue scripts into a separate script file. Once this is done, the resource script file can be passed through Pilrc (version 2.8), sourcing in the Tcl glue script file at that time. Finally, par (version 00.05.01) will combine the binaries generated by Pilrc with the Palm Tcl library to form a Palm resource file ready to download into a Palm PDA or Pose.

Toucan runs on both GNU/Linux/X Windows and Microsoft Windows platforms, though current development is on Slackware Linux 8.0 with TclTk 8.3.4.

Toucan is licensed under the same license as Tcl. Details can be found in the file LICENSE in the distribution.

Here is a list of what Toucan provides:

Graphical creation of Palm FORM and MENU resources.
Support for all FORM objects supported by Palm Tcl 0.3.
Drag-n-drop generation of FORM objects.
Access to default FORM object properties via right-click on drag-n-drop source labels.
Repositioning of forms and form objects via mouse drag with visual feedback of current coordinates.
Mouse double-click on individual MENU, FORM, and FORM objects displays a pop-up operations menu for access to element properties, element deletion, and copying of the assigned resource ID to the cut buffer for pasting to your favorite text editor (useful for speeding up Palm Tcl script development).
Dynamic modification of MENU, FORM, and FORM object properties via dialog windows.
Creation and editing of Palm launcher large icon and small icon resource bitmaps. Jan Nitjmans' Img extension is needed to support BMP file read and write.
Creation of BITMAP[GREY|GREY16|COLOR|COLOR16|COLOR16K] elements and their associations to BMP files. Support for FORMBITMAP objects has been added to allow placement of bitmaps onto the Palm display.
Support for the STRING resources. STRING resources can be treated as either arbitrary strings or Palm Tcl scripts.
For some Form objects, a default to AUTO on width or height is set when the corresponding slider is set to 0.
Entries on Form element and Form object dialogs which reference other resources (namely IDs) are now pick lists of ID values that are currently available. For example, the Menu ID selection on the Form properties dialog is disabled (or only one 'Null' entry) unless there are Menu IDs to select from . Note that this causes some breakage of Toucan 1.0 project (.tpj) files.
A built-in, multiple document interface (MDI) editor is available to support the editing of STRING resources. When editing Palm Tcl scripts, the editors provide syntax highlighting. Standard editing functions are available, through both hot keys and an Edit menu. Editor characteristics, such as font type, size, and color, can be changed by the user. The editor content can be stored in an external file (mainitaining compatibility with earlier version of Toucan) or embedded within the Toucan project file and the resource script file processed by PilRC. Each editor window has document change detection to prevent loss of unsaved data. The MDI editor is based on the ctext megawidget (version 2.5.1) developed by George Peter Staplin enhanced to provide electric brace, parenthesis, and quotes matching and text change detection.
Setting of command line parameters for PilRC and par utilities. Both utilities are required for use with Toucan (see Links below).
Generation of PilRC script file (.rcp) and files generated by PilRC and par commands, with execution feedback in a dialog window.
Storage and retrieval of all resource properties, bitmap data, and utility parameters in a single Toucan project file (.tpj). Optionally, files containing STRING resources that are referenced by the Toucan project and be loaded automatically when the project is loaded.
The HTML-based documentation has been replaced with documentation in PDF format.
Graphic icons are available for use with desktop launchers.
New toucanLib1.2 library file to hold supporting libraries.

Current documentation is in the form of a manual in Abobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. It can be found in the Toucan 1.2 distributions.

Files on CDROM

A copy of the paper Toucan: A feathered friend for the Palm in Abobe Acrobat (.pdf) format can be obtained here. This paper was presented at the 9th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference in Vancouver, B.C., Canada on September 19, 2002.
Toucan 1.2.1 in a gzipped tar archive for GNU/Linux (and other Un*xes) can be obtained here.
Toucan 1.2.1 in a pkzip archive for Microsoft Windows can be obtained here.
Palm Tcl 0.4 in a pkzip archive can be obtained here. Note that this archive contains pre-compiled binaries of the PilRC and par utilities for Microsoft Windows.
A source code distribution of PilRC 2.8 in a gzipped tar archive can be obtained here.
A source code distribution of par 0.05.01 in a gzipped tar archive can be obtained here.

Feedback

Feedback and suggestions for new features for Toucan are invited. Be aware that development is still ongoing. New features and bug fixes are in the works. New versions of Toucan will be made available as time allows. You can send your emails to [email protected]. Replace "home" with "attbi" for all you non-spammers!

Links

The ActiveState Tcl website.
Ashok Nadkarni, developer of Palm Tcl, has a SourceForge site.
Home page of Jan Nitjmans, developer of the Img extension.
Home page of George Peter Staplin and the ctext megawidget.
Home page of Aaron Ardiri and the PilRC utility.
Home page of David Williams and the par utility.
The Palm OS Developers webpage.

Last updated Wednesday, August 21, 2002