[vtkusers] Windows Precompiled missing Tcl/Tk libs?

[Pan, Tony C (CRD)]

hehe, don't I sound like an idiot.... Thanks Sebastian, and sorry about all the questions with
obvious answers.

I was trying to get a classroom full of students set up to use vtk, so there were a few issues I was
trying to work through, not the least of which is the collection of platforms.

One last question: under window 98, I ran into the Tcl83.dll not found error when I try to run
vtk.exe from DOS.  The problem does not exist if I run from wish83 or by double click on the tcl file
directly.  vtkCore40, vtkTcl40, and ActiveTcl 8.3.4.1 are installed.  The TCLLIBPATH was set up
properly in autoexec.bat.  What am I missing?


Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: Sebastien BARRE [mailto:sebastien.barre at kitware.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 11:50 AM
To: Pan, Tony C (CRD)
Cc: vtkusers at public.kitware.com
Subject: Re: [vtkusers] Windows Precompiled missing Tcl/Tk libs?


Good morning,

At 1/24/2002 09:24 AM, Pan, Tony C (CRD) wrote:
>Good morning.  I don't know if this is by design or not: the windows 
>precompiled distribution does not include Tcl/Tk libs,

No it's not, this would add another 2.5 Mo, and many people may definitely 
want to use their own Tcl/Tk version/distrib.

We just put a Tcl/Tk distrib available for download:
http://public.kitware.com/VTK/files/misc/tcltk/
The web site has been updated to mention that link.

>  nor does it set up the TCLLIBPATH in the environment automatically.

Yes, by design too.
If you are running vtk.exe to execute your Tcl script, you should be just 
fine. And this is the default, since the installer sets an association 
between Tcl and "VTK Document".

But you are in a "experienced user" situation since you are trying to run 
the Tcl scripts from Tclsh or Wish and you knew how to change that 
association. This means that you know about TCLLIBPATH :)) We would prefer 
not set TCLLIBPATH and PATH because we do not want that suddently the wrong 
VTK or the wrong DLL is picked.

>VTK3.2 executables were able to run right after installation.

No.
a) You had to set your PATH so that Tcl could find the DLL
b) the whole package structure was different, and a single call to "load 
vtktcl.dll" was enough. We split every packages (Graphics, Common, Imaging) 
into their own DLL in 4.0, and the same applies to the TCL DLL, so we can 
no longer use the same "load" approach.

>I was not able to find anything documentation addressing this issue in the 
>mailing list archive, the online download doc, the FAQ, the readme files 
>included in the package. (The readme in the Wrapping/tcl does talk about 
>setting up TCLLIBPATH, but I had to find the file first)

I have searched the mainling list (http://www.kitware.com/search.html), and 
I was able to find at least 25 articles about TCLLIBPATH, several of them 
addressing this issue.

The Wrapping/Tcl/README file has detailed step-by-step instructions. And 
you found it :)

I'll update the FAQ.

>   Please let me know if this is indeed an problem.  If not, please update 
> the website or include some kind of install-readme file

It *is* in the main README.html:
"[...] If you have enabled Tcl wrapping, you will want to set TCLLIBPATH to 
point to the VTK/Wrapping/Tcl directory. [...]"

Hope this helps


--
Sebastien Barre