Dictionary of lingo
arguments - the words which follow the Tcl/Tk command at the beginning
of each statement are termed the arguments.
command - the first word in every Tcl/Tk statement (or line
of code) is what is termed the command.
download - this refers to an operation whereby some software
is fetched from an Internet site and moved down to your computer.
editor - this is the tool we will be using to type and store
our programs. On the PC we will be using Wordpad (on the Mac
it will be Simple Text or BBedit). An editor is just a very
simplified word processor.
GUI - short for "Graphical User Interface" ... pronounced "goo
eee"
installing software - once software has been downloaded it typically
needs to be adjusted to run on your machine. This adjustment step
is referred to as "installing the software"
interpretive mode - this is a way of programming supported by
many languages whereby you can run your program immediately after typing
each line in directly.
mailing list - a simple way to connect students and instructors
together using email (for more details click here)
programming language - this is what humans use to instruct a
computer as to what we want it to do
prompt - the Wish console window uses the "%" as what is called
a prompt. This marks the spot where you can interact with the
Wish program by typing things directly.
running a program - this is the final step in the "programming
cycle". In Tcl/Tk it typically involves telling the Wish console
program where to find the source for your program.
screenshot - throughout this course we will be using images
of our computer screens to illustrate how things should look.
These images we have captured are referred to as screenshots.
shortcuts (or alias's) - a shortcut typically is an icon that
you create which allows you to avoid lots of mouse clicks to launch a given
application.
source code - this is the name given to the file containing
the programming language statements for a given piece of software.
string - this is short for "string of characters"
Tcl/Tk - these are the programming tools we will be using.
Pronounced "tickle tee kay" (for more info click
here)
widget - a basic item such as a button which is drawn on the
Wish window.
widget attributes - these are all the properties of the widget
that programmers can control eg. the color
Wish - this is the name for the Tcl/Tk tool we will be using
to run our graphical programs