WebWiseTclTk, OmniDesk and OmniFlows: A User-Con gurable Distributed Design Environment inside a Web-Browser

Publications at this site are occasionally revised, please check for the latest version under the same title. Abstract. Today, Web browsers provide a convenient access to the Internet while (1) increasing the number of useful desktop functions, and, (2) reducing the platform dependence on the operating system of the host. This paper introduces a toolkit WebWiseTclTk and demonstrates a range of its applications in support of a heterogeneous computing environment where CAD tools, data, and users are distributed across the continent. Specii-cally, we implemented OmniDesk, as a Tcl applet that creates a user-conngurable desktop within the Web browser window. User can place any number of objects onto the Om-niDesk, ranging from windows that display the contents of a directory or a le on a remote host, to OmniFlow applets that can execute any sequence of user-deened, tool-speciic, and data-dependent tasks. Identical versions of OmniDesk and a variety of user-conngurable OmniFlow class libraries can be mirrored on several Web sites or can be installed locally for faster access and execution. The WebWiseTclTk toolkit is an enhancement of the existing feature set of Safe-Tcl and Safe-Tk, that does not compromise security. The toolkit re-deenes the functionality of the auto load mechanism in Tcl such that it works for packages located anywhere on the World Wide Web. It also reintroduces several commands not available in Safe-Tk such as toplevel and menu to provide a much richer feature set of Tk commands. The toolkit is written entirely in Safe-Tcl/Tk and uses the home policy for running applications as Tcl-plugins. The toolkit supports (1) creation of new Web-based Tcl applications with greatly enhanced functionality, and (2) migration of existing Tcl applications to the Web by merely writing an encapsulation script. For example, only a simple encapsulation script is required for Web-based execution of the Tk Widget Demonstrations, distributed with the core Tcl/Tk. Note.This document has been published for viewing on the Web in Postscript and HTML formats. The latter is annotated with active hyperlinks to facilitate quick browsing of this and related documents.