Recent Changes of Tcl/Tk/DMH

Recent Hume Changes and Improvements

• New Tcl commands dmh_import, dmh_var, and vset have been added to the Tcl 8.3 DMH83 library and to the GEM application library to support deploying applications that are compatible with Tcl 8.4 and Tcl 8.3.  (10/1/2002).
• Use of the flag TCL_PARSE_PART1 was eliminated in the Hume library code to enhance compatibility with package loading of this version into future versions of Tcl. In particular, a minor bug with using this version of the dmh package with Tcl 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 was fixed. (8/25/03).
• GEM Host handling of data items in S6F3 reports was made the same as user-defined event reports so oversize data can be handled. (6/13/2003).
• The hub83 script was updated so that the acknowledgement dialog shown after updating a table row is limited in size. (3/4/03).
• The handling of trailing space characters in selection results with the POSIX Oracle odbc software was revised. Trailing space characters in varchar and char data are no longer removed by default. The SET command option, strip_rhs_white, can be set true to restore the old behavior. (1/28/03).
• Receiving logic for the Tcl udp command was updated to fix an issue with receiving before a user callback is registered. (1/21/03).
• The POSIX C DMH client library, and similar DMH client libraries for Visual C++, Java, and Visual Basic were updated to have cleanup logic execute at the DMH server to close temporary mailboxes that are used when a reply message is sent after the client DoXact() method returns a TIMEOUT result.  The Java DMH server logic was also revised for this feature. (1/15/03)
• A change was made for Win32 in the DMH server logic to improve performance for processing mailbox commands by the server. (11/25/02).
• The GEM equipment application was updated to guard against corrupted spool file data which could occur if multiple program instances write to the same file. (11/20/02).
• The secsport and hsms logic was updated to send S9F7 in response to invalid SECS-II data structures. It is still up to the application logic to send S9F7 when a message data structure is valid but not appropriate for a particular stream and function. (11/19/02)
• The GEM host rcmd argument processing was updated to be more forgiving of using string arguments without surrounding braces. (11/18/02)
• The SECS-I multi-block logic was updated so that T4 timeouts occur without waiting when the last data block of a message is received and there have been block sequence errors. (11/18/02)
• The GEM Supervisor application was updated to include checkbox disabling for the use of S1F17 (online request) and S2F31 (clock synchronization) during initialization.  Also, new logic was added to the GEM host software to automatically correct itself when an incorrect Device ID is being used.  The initialization logic in procedure ei_init was revised so that the trace window is optionally created before any communication is attempted.  The alarm discovery logic was also made faster and more adaptive in situations where S5F7 is not supported.  The creation of variable names for VFEI event reports was revised to create unique names when confronted with equipment using the same variable names repeatedly.  The secsport/hsms HTML document was enhanced with links to the command synopsis entries, and with more material on handling abort and Stream 9 error replies. (8/27/02).
• A new procedure, secs_DMH_reply, was added to the GEM software to make it easier to control SECS conversions from a DMH message system client. (6/12/02).
• A new command itcl_mkindex has been added to the package in order to build tclIndex files that include [incr Tcl] classes and methods. (4/2/02)
• The Tcl mbx command has been updated to include the clientID method. The method returns the identifier that the DMH server uses for the client connection. (4/2/02)
• A new Tcl/Tk Package Installer has been developed, and integrated with the DMH product installation script. The Package Installer is able to install 3rd party Tcl/Tk extensions and the new Hume component series with the help of description files and a standard subdirectory layout for .zip archives. (3/17/02)
• The Hume Component Series now consists of 4 high-level components and 2 library packages. The components are a powerful start for a reseller to build sophisticated, feature-rich product offerings, or for an enduser company that wants to create custom solutions that are superior to commercial products. (3/1/02)
• A new equipment constant, UseMultiBlockInquire, has been added to the GEM equipment software, so that multiblock inquire/grant behavior is configurable at runtime. The default for HSMS has been set to disabled which is a substantial performance enhancement for event reports exceeding 244 bytes. For both the GEM equipment and the GEM host applications, a new element, MULTIBLOCK, exists in the connection array and may be set by custom code to control multiblock inquire/grant. (1/19/02).
• References to Hume Integration Services were changed to Hume Integration Software. (11/13/01)
• The Data Collection Component (DCC) has the ability to notify individuals or recipient lists by e-mail or telephone when SPC alarms occur.  The ability to configure, manage, and collect SECS Trace Report data is also new.  There is also support for automatically collecting data from SECS Event Reports.  Charting, tabular data reports, and manual data entry, are other available features of the Hume provided User Interface.  The first product shipment of the DCC occurred in October 2001 to an OEM who is using the SPC capabilities for online process tool control. (8/28/02)
• A POSIX DMH client library for multithreaded C applications is available for Unix platforms, and also for Win32 platforms.  The demonstration application for the library can also be used as a standalone utility to send and receive DMH messages. (6/14/02).
• Enhancements have been made to the DMH Java package for integrating web-based applications with the DMH.  Recently the class TclListModel was added to simplify displaying a Tcl list in a Swing listbox or combobox widget. Last revised (8/13/02).
• The Visual C++ DLL for integrating NT C++ applications was last updated on 6/14/02.  The ability to configure the description of the client seen from the DMH status window was added.
• A new Visual Basic GEM Equipment application is provided as an example to equipment manufacturers of deploying the Hume GEM software as a background process. Changes and new procedures were added to the GEM equipment software to make this an easier task.
• Datahub menu items were added for CSV table output and a new procedure hub_table_csv was added. Output mapping of imbedded newlines was revised 12/3/01. The hub_select_to_csv procedure was added 4/7/02.
• The datahub script was changed to use an alias for the file command in order to be compatible with TclPro and the stat subcommand. (8/1/01) This change was revised 9/18/01 to fix an issue with remote hubclient usage.
• [incr Tcl], [incr Tk], and IWidgets were added to the Hume distribution. Minor changes were made to integrate the packages documentation, demonstration scripts, and their build files. (8/13/01)
• A fix was made to the ODBC support for tablenames that contain the $ character, and to the Unix Oracle SQL process subcommand. The Unix Oracle support was updated and newly ported to Linux. There is support for longer error messages, and a disconnect command. The Oracle binaries are now built with dynamic linking so $ORACLE_HOME/lib may be needed in the environment dynamic loading path. (9/5/01)
• Static buffers used by the SQL command were expanded to allow 2500 tokens in an SQL statement, and up to 70,000 characters per input SQL statement. A table create statement with 1200 columns is possible. (9/13/01)
• New Datahub Tcl commands were created for HTML or XML output of table data, table schema, or subscription information. A dialog was added to the Datahub user interface for HTML document output. (10/20/01)
• The SECS software was enhanced to support SEMI code "22" data often referred to as Variant or as Localized Character Strings. The Hume package supports all of the specified E5-0301 encodings including UTF-8, Unicode, iso8559-1, shiftjis, euc-jp, euc-kr, gb1988, euc-cn, and big5. (10/25/01)
• Fixed a problem with the SQL command in providing simple error messages when == is improperly used as a comparison operator. Also, fixed certain situations when select statement error replies were not formatted in the expected Tcl Reply Format. (1/16/02)
• The error code for the SQL open command in the case of a duplicate subscription name was changed from 4 to 11 to be unique and the datahub document was updated. (1/16/02)
• The GEM equipment application use of ECMIN, ECMAX Equipment constant limits was updated to allow for vector numeric values, and to add comparison logic for U8 and I8 values.   A bug when using type U4 with ECMAX values greater than 2^31 was fixed. String value checking can be bypassed by configuring empty strings for ECMIN and ECMAX. (5/28/02).
• Added the get_info subcommand to the odbc command. (3/8/02).
• The dmh package index, pkgIndex.tcl, was updated. Now, the dmh library is added to the auto_path as soon as package require dmh is executed. (3/21/02).
• The HSMS host software was updated to retry when attempting to reconnect to equipment, when the equipment accepts the socket connection but rejects the HSMS session initiation.  Also, a new configuration option, hsms_reentrant, was added to the hsms command to provide additional control over the nested execution of callbacks.  The HSMS T7 timeout logic has been revised so that in the situation of rapidly opening and closing connections, there is no possibility of a T7 timer from an earlier connection affecting a later connection. (5/10/02).
• Several new status variables have been added to the GEM equipment simulator.  These variables provide interesting floating point values which are useful to demonstrate and test Trace Report and Event Report features.  The Hume Data Collection Component can be used to configure, manage, and collect Trace Reports from SECS equipment. (5/15/02)
• The Windows program item, "DMH Shell", was updated so that the interpreter exits when the console window is closed. (5/28/02).
• Both the GEM host and equipment software were fixed for minor bugs when using recipe names that have embedded white space.  The host ei_rcmd procedure was modified to not process backslash sequences as found in DOS pathnames.  The host RCMD_PP-SELECT default configuration entry was updated so that backslashes in DOS filenames are not processed. (8/14/02).
• The GEM host event report setup logic was revised to better handle ordering of items for report configurations not created by the default GUI, in combination with non-annotated event reports. (9/24/02).

New with Tcl/Tk 8.3

• new HTML pages Additional HTML documents describe Tk's color names, keysyms and numerous C language functions.
• updated http extension Numerous improvements have been made to the http package which is now at version 2.3. The latest msgcat package is at version 1.1 (6/6/01).
• Various 8.3.3 fixes The 8.3.3 release includes many small fixes and improvements including revision of the Tcl IO channel code to better handle stacked channel drivers such as the Trf compression and encryption package. Also the tk_dialog code was fixed so that modal dialogs are not hidden if the parent window is not visible. Hume had provided a version of this fix in the 8.3.0 release. (8.3.3 changes added 6/7/01)
• 8.3.2 exec memory leak fixed Hume has patched the 8.3.2 Tcl release to include newer changes that fix a memory leak in the revised Tcl IO channel code. This patch fixes a memory leak problem when using exec repeatedly. (2/6/01)
• octal error messages Improved the error messages generated when an invalid octal number (e.g., 0899) is used in a math expression.
• lsort -unique This new option to lsort removes duplications from lists as it sorts.
• glob Added the -type, -path, -directory, and -join switches to give more control over how files are matched.
• file date stamps. The file atime and mtime commands were extended to allow setting the file modify and access time.
• file channels. This new command lists the open channels.
• scan This can now return a list of values instead of assigning to variables.
• array unset This command can clear an array without complaining if the array doesn't exist.
• Img Patch. Adopted the "Img" patch from Jan Nijtmans that makes the image command Tcl_Obj-based, adds support for binary -data args, adds alpha channel to images, adds GIF write capability (non patent-infringing run-length-encoding).
• Dash Patch. This patch adds a variety of features, including:
• Dashed line support on the canvas.
• Pointer warping via the event -warp option,
• Support for <Quadruple> clicks
• Entry widget validation routines.
• New -state hidden in text widgets. TkMan users no longer have to patch Tk!
• New -state -active* -disabled* -offset options to canvas items.
• Postscript printing of images and windows from the canvas.
• Canvas. Advanced tag searching has been added to operations like 'find' and 'addtag'. You can search for canvas items using boolean functions of their tags:

$canvas find withtag {linetag && redtag}

• Listboxes Added the -listvariable option to link a listbox to a variable, and added itemconfigure to allow coloring individual items.
• Standard Dialogs. updated dialogs to use color icons on Unix. Improved behavior of -initialfile to tk_get*File.

Hume Changes to the Tcl/Tk Core Distribution

• Hume has fixed a problem in the Tk library tkEntryAutoScan procedure which affected ordering keystroke entry on Windows, when using entry widgets with modal windows, and having done a mouse drag selection of text in the entry widget, and releasing the mouse button to the left of the entry widget. (12/11/01)
• The Tk library console.tcl is updated so that memory usage by console output is made finite at a user configurable number of lines.
• The command memory_stats is added, and compiled by default for Windows NT.
• The NT console is given a larger font. The console Edit menu has a Clear action. The console Help menu has a new item to display errorInfo, and a new item to display the HTML documentation. Bindings are added for Motif style cut-and-paste and NT style right button paste. These changes are actually done at runtime without changing the core code.
• The Tk C code is patched for Windows NT so that winfo interps works using DDE.
• The Tcl library is patched so that index files of the name tclindex.txt are used if tclIndex is not found. This enables Tcl to execute from an ISO CDROM image where tclIndex is not a valid filename.
• The Tk C code is patched to create an option to the winfo command, timelastevent. Executing winfo timelastevent returns a value that changes with each new window event. This value will be unchanged over time when there has been no user interaction with the window interface. An application can poll this value using after, and determine if the user has been inactive.
• Hume compiles the Tcl DLL on windows NT so that 256 socket connections are possible. The default compilation results in a limit of 64.
• The NT tkWinX.x is patched so that it can be compiled without the user having the recently added Microsoft header file zmouse.h.
• The NT tclWinPipe.c is patched so that built in commands like "type" work without the user specifying cmd.exe /c. Also, NT batch files with the extension .cmd are made executable. Similar logic in the 8.3.3 init.tcl file has been patched to allow mixed case shell commands. (6/6/01)
• The NT tcl8.3/library/reg1.0/pkgIndex.tcl was patched to eliminate errors that occurred when executing package require.
• Hume fixes the Tk build and configure logic for SunOS 4.1, AIX 3.2.5, and AIX 4.3. The Hume provided Makefile documents that +DAportable should be used on HP-UX and that -Dshl_load=cxxshl_load should be used on HP-UX if dynamic loading of C++ extensions is needed.
• Hume converts the Tcl/Tk man pages to HTML, adds new pages, and provides custom indexes. Hume removes multiple, strange occurrences of "the the" from the man pages. Hume has revised the encoding man page which had erroneous information regarding Tcl's internal string representation. Hume has revised the colors man page which had erroneous RGB color values.
• Hume is maintaining a workable NT Makefile for the Microsoft VC compilers. The public build is using gcc for NT, and the VC makefile is not being maintained.