CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever 1.0.255.1024

CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk

A fully managed, cross-platform implementation of the Tcl scripting language — and of the classic Tk widget toolkit — for .NET. CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk embeds a complete Tcl interpreter — variables, expressions, commands, procedures, namespaces, and a rich two-way .NET object-interop bridge — directly into your application, with no native dependencies. CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk is provided as three .NET 10 libraries and their associated NuGet packages: CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever (the interpreter), CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever (interpreter-side sqlite3 and pdf4tcl command extensions) and CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever (the Tk widget toolkit, drawn on SkiaSharp and hosted in a CodeBrix.Platform application).

CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk supports applications and assemblies that target Microsoft .NET version 10.0 and later. Microsoft .NET version 10.0 is a Long-Term Supported (LTS) version of .NET, and was released on Nov 11, 2025; and will be actively supported by Microsoft until Nov 14, 2028. Please update your C#/.NET code and projects to the latest LTS version of Microsoft .NET.

Installation

The interpreter - the package to start with:

dotnet add package CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever

The interpreter-side sqlite3 and pdf4tcl command extensions:

dotnet add package CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever

The Tk widget toolkit and its CodeBrix.Platform host control:

dotnet add package CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever

Which one do I reference? Reference CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever on its own when you only need to run Tcl scripts from .NET. Add CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever when your scripts expect the sqlite3 or pdf4tcl commands. Reference CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever when your scripts - or your C# code - build a user interface: it brings the interpreter package in with it, so there is no need to reference the interpreter separately. .Extras and .TkCanvas are independent of each other; reference both if you want both.

Note that the NuGet package IDs and the namespaces are different - the license suffix is part of the package ID only, and there is no package named plain CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk:

• NuGet package ID: CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever - assembly and root namespace CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk, with the public API in the _Components.Public namespace - i.e. using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk._Components.Public;
• NuGet package ID: CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever - assembly and primary namespace CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras - i.e. using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras;
• NuGet package ID: CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever - assembly and primary namespace CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas - i.e. using CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas;

XML documentation (IntelliSense) ships alongside the .Extras and .TkCanvas assemblies.

Each package pulls its dependencies in automatically; no version pinning is needed in the consuming project:

• CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever has a single dependency, System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs
  • a Microsoft first-party package used for signature verification.
• CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever adds CodeBrix.Sqlite (the SQLite engine) and CodeBrix.PdfDocuments (the PDF writer and its font embedding).
• CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever adds SkiaSharp (all drawing), CodeBrix.Imaging.ApacheLicenseForever (image decoding and encoding for photo images), CodeBrix.Platform.ApacheLicenseForever and CodeBrix.Platform.SkiaSharp.Views.MitLicenseForever (the UI stack the host control paints on), and the three font packages it renders with - CodeBrix.Platform.Fonts.RobotoMono.OflLicenseForever, CodeBrix.Platform.Fonts.Roboto.OflLicenseForever and CodeBrix.Platform.Fonts.Merriweather.OflLicenseForever.

Do not add a second SkiaSharp package reference alongside .TkCanvas: it already pins the SkiaSharp line that the CodeBrix.Platform Skia runtime heads use, and a second reference can produce a version conflict.

To put a Tk user interface on screen, a .TkCanvas application also needs exactly one CodeBrix.Platform platform head package (for example the Linux X11 head). Headless and offscreen use - rendering into any SKCanvas and driving input synthetically - needs no head.

CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk supports:

• Creating one or more independent, embeddable Tcl interpreters in-process
• Evaluating Tcl scripts and expressions from C#, and reading their results
• Getting and setting Tcl variables (scalars and arrays) from managed code
• The full core Tcl command set, procedures (proc), and namespaces
• A built-in script library, embedded in the assembly (no files to deploy)
• A two-way object-interop bridge for calling .NET from Tcl and vice-versa
• Custom commands, script threads, cancellation, hosts and safe interpreters
• Cross-platform operation on Windows, Linux, and macOS with zero native dependencies

CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras supports:

Interpreter-side Tcl command extensions that let existing Tcl programs which expect the classic sqlite3 and pdf4tcl packages run unmodified on the managed interpreter.

• sqlite3 NAME PATH - a tclsqlite-compatible database command (handle verbs eval, onecolumn, changes, close; caller-scope :name parameter binding; unset-variable → SQL NULL; NULL → empty-string read-back), backed by CodeBrix.Sqlite on a PRAGMA-neutral plaintext path, so SQLite files it writes are interchangeable with files written by stock Tcl applications
• pdf4tcl::new / pdf4tcl::loadBaseTrueTypeFont / pdf4tcl::createFont and the pdf4tcl-compatible drawing surface (startPage, setFont, setFillColor, setStrokeColor, setLineStyle, getStringWidth, text, line, rectangle, polygon, write, destroy), backed by CodeBrix.PdfDocuments
• Registration of either command set individually, or of both at once

CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas supports:

A retained-mode implementation of the classic Tk widget toolkit, drawn entirely onto a SkiaSharp surface, for CodeBrix.Platform applications and for headless use.

• The Tk geometry managers (pack, grid) and the Tk window tree
• The classic widget set - frame, labelframe, label, button, entry, text, listbox, treeview, combobox, checkbutton, radiobutton, panedwindow, scrollbar, separator and menus - as typed C# classes
• The canvas widget with its scene-graph item model (arc, bitmap, image, line, oval, polygon, rectangle, text, window) and the full search and geometry surface: find, bbox, coords, tags, scroll, scan and item bindings
• The Tk event / bind / focus / grab system, after and update scheduling, photo images, fonts, clipboard, overlay toplevels with a mini window manager, message dialogs, colour theming, the option database and ttk::style
• TkHostView - a ready-made CodeBrix.Platform control hosting a whole Tk tree - plus XAML declaration elements for every widget
• A Tcl command bridge that registers the classic Tk command surface on a CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk interpreter, so an unmodified Tcl/Tk program presents its user interface through this toolkit
• Identical rendering and measurement on every platform: the toolkit draws with the font packages it brings with it and never with an operating-system font
• Headless operation - build a window tree, lay it out and render it to an image with no display

Sample Code

Evaluating a Tcl script and reading the result

using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk._Components.Public;

Result result = null;

using (Interpreter interpreter = Interpreter.Create(ref result))
{
    ReturnCode code = interpreter.EvaluateScript("expr {6 * 7}", ref result);

    if (code == ReturnCode.Ok)
        System.Console.WriteLine(result); // 42
    else
        System.Console.WriteLine("error: {0}", result);
}

Getting and setting variables

using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk._Components.Public;

Result result = null;
Result value = null;

using (Interpreter interpreter = Interpreter.Create(ref result))
{
    interpreter.SetVariableValue("name", "world", ref result);
    interpreter.EvaluateScript("set greeting \"hello, $name\"", ref result);

    interpreter.GetVariableValue("greeting", ref value, ref result);
    System.Console.WriteLine(value); // hello, world
}

Registering the sqlite3 and pdf4tcl commands

using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk._Components.Public;
using CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras;

Result result = null;

using (Interpreter interpreter = Interpreter.Create(ref result))
{
    Result error = null;
    TclTkExtras.RegisterAll(interpreter, ref error);

    interpreter.EvaluateScript(
        "sqlite3 db :memory:\n" +
        "db eval {create table t (a integer, b text)}\n" +
        "set b hello\n" +
        "db eval {insert into t values (1, :b)}\n" +
        "db onecolumn {select b from t}", ref result);

    System.Console.WriteLine(result); // hello
}

Building a Tk user interface in code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Layout;
using CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Widgets;
using CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Windowing;

TkWindow root = TkWindow.CreateRoot();   // or: TkHostView host = new(); TkWindow root = host.Root;
root.SetForcedSize(320, 200);

TkWindow buttonWindow = root.CreateChild("hello");
var button = new ButtonWidget(buttonWindow);
button.Configure(new Dictionary<string, string> { { "-text", "Hello" } });
button.Invoked += () => Console.WriteLine("clicked");
PackLayout.Configure(buttonWindow, new PackOptions { Side = Side.Top });

TkWindow listWindow = root.CreateChild("list");
var listbox = new ListboxWidget(listWindow);
listbox.Insert(0, "alpha", "beta", "gamma");
PackLayout.Configure(listWindow, new PackOptions { Side = Side.Left, Fill = Fill.Y });

root.Tree.Scheduler.UpdateIdleTasks();   // geometry is final after this
Console.WriteLine(buttonWindow.Width);

Declaring the same user interface in XAML

<Page x:Class="MyApp.Views.MainPage"
      xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
      xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
      xmlns:tkhost="using:CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Hosting"
      xmlns:tk="using:CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Xaml">

  <tkhost:TkHostView x:Name="TkHost" Theme="DarkNew">
    <tk:TkFrame Side="Top" Fill="X">
      <tk:TkLabel Side="Left" Text="Name:" PadX="4" />
      <tk:TkEntry x:Name="NameEntry" Side="Left" Fill="X" Expand="True" />
    </tk:TkFrame>
    <tk:TkText x:Name="Output" Fill="Both" Expand="True"
               WidthChars="60" HeightLines="12" />
  </tkhost:TkHostView>
</Page>

Documentation

Each NuGet package includes an AGENT-README.txt, a complete API reference and usage guide written for AI coding agents - point your agent at the file inside the package it is writing code against:

• CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.BsdLicenseForever - the interpreter: creating and evaluating, variables, custom commands, script threads, cancellation, hosts, safe interpreters, .NET object bridging and traces. (AGENT-README.txt)
• CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.BsdLicenseForever - the sqlite3 and pdf4tcl command surfaces, verb by verb, with their exact error texts. (AGENT-README.txt)
• CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.BsdLicenseForever - the widget, canvas, layout, event and font APIs, the XAML elements, the Tcl command bridge, and hosted versus headless operation. (AGENT-README.txt)

Additional sample code and usage examples are available in the test projects:

• https://github.com/ellisnet/CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk/tree/main/tests/CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Tests
• https://github.com/ellisnet/CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk/tree/main/tests/CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras.Tests
• https://github.com/ellisnet/CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk/tree/main/tests/CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas.Tests

License

CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk, CodeBrix.Platform.TclTk.Extras and CodeBrix.Platform.TkCanvas are licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License - see the LICENSE-MODIFICATIONS.txt file.

For licensing and provenance information about the open source code included in these packages - including the further permissive license reproduced in the LICENSE file - see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt.