XF: An interface builder for Tcl/Tk

What is XF ?
------------
XF allows you to interactively build and modify a user
interface based upon the Tcl/Tk package. You will need the
Tcl/TK package to run XF (at least version 2.3). The output
generated by XF is a Tcl/Tk script that can be executed with
wish or any other Tcl/Tk interpreter.

The idea for XF was born when I got my fingers on BYO. You
will find that some basic concepts of BYO have been taken
for XF, but there are a lot of changed/additional
concepts/features:

XF features:
	  - provides full support for TK 3.2 (!!!),
	  - editing "on the fly". XF is running as a
	    part of the application (not in an external
	    wish),
	  - editing of existing Tcl/Tk programs,
	  - placing and sizing of widgets by direct
	    manipulation (what I call direct manipulation :-),
	  - full access to all widget attributes,
	  - cut and paste functionality,
	  - provides the access to "templates" (pieces
	    of interface elements and procedures that
            can be inserted in your program),
	  - integrates your preferred editor (emacs :-),
	  - integrates version control for procedures,
	  - a help system (you should really use it if
            you get frustrated :-),
	  - interactive tutorial,
	  - support for xygraph, hypertext and photo,
	  - allows the fast and flexible integration of
	    new widget types (contact me if you have an
	    interesting widget and want to integrate it
	    into XF),
	  - creation of widget structures via procedures,
	  - modularization of the output script,
	  - setting of resources for widget groups,
	  - autosaving,
	  - and much more to be discovered....

Requirements:
-------------
This program is written for Tk 2.3, Tk 3.0, Tk 3.1 and Tk
3.2. So you need this package, especially the wish
interpreter. The support for Tk 2.3 may be not complete at
some points.  Testing is mainly done with Tk 3.2.

The manual page was written for groff. With another troff, I
got terrible output, but that was probably an exotic one
:-).

Installation:
-------------
Please unpack the XF distribution inside the directory where
XF should be "officially" located (i.e. /usr/local/lib).
The compressed tar file contains a directory tree named
"xf2.2/...". The installation procedure will not copy the XF
files to another location. When the distribution is
unpacked, you have to configure the Makefile. The Makefile
contains some file and path names that must correspond to
your system. You only have to adapt the Makefile at the top
of the distribution directory tree. For a detailed
description of the installation take a look at the file
INSTALL.

Availability:
-------------
XF is available via anonymous ftp at:
	harbor.ecn.purdue.edu:	pub/tcl/contrib/code/xf2.2pl?.tar.gz
	ftp.ibp.fr:		pub/tcl/contrib/code/xf2.2pl?.tar.gz
	nic.funet.fi:		pub/languages/tcl/code/xf2.2pl?.tar.gz
	coma.cs.tu-berlin.de:	pub/tcl/xf2.2pl?.tar.gz or
                                pub/tcl/xf.tar.gz (always the last release)

Please look for patchfiles beyond the archives patchlevel!!

Mailing list:
-------------
There exist two mailing lists for XF. Take a look at the
file MAILLIST in the XF source directory.

Feedback (Author):
------------------
Sven Delmas
TU Berlin, Germany
garfield@cs.tu-berlin.de

