This book contains a great deal of information about Expect and Tcl. Yet there are other resources that you may find useful. I will occasionally refer to some of these resources. The others are just for extra reading on your own.
The software for Expect, Tcl, and related packages include online manuals often called man pages. This is the definitive reference material. I will occasionally use the phrase Tcl reference material, for example, to refer to the Tcl man pages. As with most references, the reference material does not provide a lot of background or examples. Nevertheless, it is the most crucial documentation and therefore comes with the software itself.
I encourage you to use TkMan for reading man pages. Written by Tom Phelps at the University of California at Berkeley, TkMan provides an extremely pleasant GUI for browsing man pages. I cannot describe all the nice features of TkMan in this small space. Instead I will merely say that I now actually look forward to reading man pages as long as I can do it with TkMan. TkMan is written in Tcl and Tk and offers a splendid example of their power. Instructions on how to obtain TkMan can be found in the Tcl FAQ (see page 19).
Authoritatively written by the author of Tcl and Tk, John Ousterhout’s Tcl and the Tk Toolkit (Addison-Wesley, 1994) is really four books in one, all written in a very readable and balanced style. Two of the books introduce Tcl and Tk. The other two describe how to write extensions for Tcl and Tk. If you find yourself writing many Expect scripts or becoming interested in applying Tcl to other projects, I strongly recommend you read this book.
Although Ousterhout’s book does not cover all the features of Tcl and Tk, it nonetheless may be the place to turn for your questions left unanswered by Exploring Expect. For example, Tcl and the Tk Toolkit provide a more thorough treatment of some of the exotic features of Tcl. Ousterhout also provides a number of fascinating historical asides as well as some philosophical notes that contrast interestingly with my own.
Software Solutions in C edited by Dale Schumacher (Academic Press, to appear) includes a chapter by Henry Spencer on the implementation of his regular expression pattern matcher which is used by Tcl and Expect. His explanation of how pattern matching is actually accomplished is lucid and fascinating. This book is intended for C programming experts, but it may provide additional insight on designing efficient patterns and otherwise using patterns effectively.
Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk by Brent Welch (Prentice Hall, to appear) focuses on the more useful parts of Tcl, Tk, and several important extensions. With his own perspective, Welch provides very good explanations of topics that have proven tricky to people even after reading Ousterhout’s book. Welch also illustrates Tcl scripting and C programming issues by way of numerous program fragments, providing many building blocks that can be used in your own applications.
The Tcl Frequently Asked Questions List (FAQ) contains many common questions and answers that somehow do not belong in either the manual pages or books. For example, the FAQ contains lists of Tcl extensions, documents, ftp sites, and of course common questions and answers. The FAQ was created by Larry Virden and is available from the Tcl archive on the Internet site http://ftp.aud.alcatel.com as tcl/docs/tcl-faq.partXXX, where XXX represents part numbers and file types. The file Index in the same directory lists the literal file names. The Tcl archive is maintained by Sam Kimery.
The Tcl FAQ can also be found on a number of other Internet sites. For example, it can be found on rtfm.mit.edu, which contains many other FAQs. The FAQ is also available through World Wide Web (WWW) as "http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu:80/hypertext/faq/usenet/tcl-faq/top.html“. The World Wide Web also provides access to other information on Tcl and Tk. The link "http://www.sco.com/IXI/of_interest/tcl/Tcl.html" contains links to other Tcl material with a focus on World Wide Web-related information such as browsers and HTML converters. Created by Mike Hopkirk, this link contains much other interesting and useful information as well. Another useful link is "http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~wade/HyperTcl/“. Created by Wade Holst, this link concentrates on Tcl extensions. Included are a jobs database and an idea database. You can register ideas that you are working on and read what others are doing with Tcl. Many other Tcl-related WWW pages can be found in the Tcl FAQ.
A large number of scholarly papers on Expect and Tcl have appeared in journals and conference proceedings. These papers are not useful for people writing simple Expect scripts. Most of these papers are intended for computer scientists and cover topics such as implementation, performance, and comparisons to other methodologies. A Tcl bibliography is available on the Internet site http://ftp.aud.alcatel.com in the directory tcl/docs. The same directory contains other miscellaneous documents such as quick reference cards and essays on miscellaneous topics.
A number of companies and individuals sell support for Tcl. These are described in the Tcl FAQ. Cygnus Support and Computerized Processes Unlimited sell support for Expect as well, and it is likely that other companies and individuals would also offer support if approached. This is not to mean that you will need support if you use Expect; however, it is not uncommon to find that management requires software be commercially supported before it is acceptable. As an aside, it may well be cost effective to have a professional support service solve your problems for you. Support can include modifications at your request, round-the-clock consulting by phone, site visits, and other services.
Cygnus Support 1937 Landings Drive Mountain View, CA 94043 +1 (415) 903-1400 info@cygnus.com Computerized Processes Unlimited 4200 S. I-10 Service Rd., Suite 205 Metairie, LA 70006 +1 (504) 889-2784 info@cpu.com
Many questions can be also be answered with the help of the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.tcl. This newsgroup contains announcements for new releases of Tcl and Tcl extensions. The newsgroup is the right place to post bug reports, fixes, observations, and, of course, humor. Many of the people who read it are experts at Tcl and Expect, and they will answer questions. Simple questions that can be found in a book or the FAQ are discouraged. But challenging problems or requests for advice are welcomed.
The comp.lang.tcl newsgroup can be subscribed to by mail. In addition, there are dozens of mailing lists on particular extensions and aspects of Tcl. All of these are documented in the FAQ.
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