DN580594971

Subject: ANNOUNCE: Agentk animation toolkit - DN [1]

mccricks@peachtree.cc.gatech.edu (D. Scott McCrickard) - 02 Feb 2000 - comp.lang.tcl

 The latest version of Agentk (version 1.0b4) is now available.  It has
 numerous bug fixes, several added features, and additional demo programs.
 It is available from:
   http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/m/Scott.McCrickard/agentk/

 What is Agentk?
 ---------------
 Agentk (pronounced agent-t-k) is an extension to the Tk toolkit that
 allows programmers to incorporate cyclic animated effects into their
 programs.  The widgets include a fade widget that fades between blocks
 of text or blocks of graphics, a ticker widget that scrolls text or
 graphics horizontally across the screen, and a roll widget that scrolls
 information vertically.  Programmers can control the contents, speed,
 and various markups.  Users can click, drag, and "throw" the visible
 information to change the speed or contents.

 New to this version is a highlighting effect for showing changes to
 the information, a shadowing effect for showing history, and a drive
 option for running multiple animations in sync.

 What programs are available?
 ----------------------------
 Along with demos for each widget, also included in the distribution are:

   tkwatch - An interface that displays weather data, stock quotes, news
     headlines, and sports scores using a fade, ticker, or list display.
     The purpose of the interface is to help users maintain awareness of
     various types of dynamic online information.

   NewsAgent - A news monitoring and reading program that downloads news
     stories from the Yahoo Web site and tickers headers across the
     screen.  If you see a header of interest, you can click on an icon
     to bring up a simple news reader.

   checklpq - A printer queue monitoring program that rolls the contents
     of the printer queue across the screen.  Great for keeping an eye on
     your print jobs when the printer is busy.

 Caveats
 -------
 Although Agentk and the included programs have been used by dozens of
 people, there is little documentation for the widgets or the programs
 (thus the beta status).  Agentk is implemented purely in Tcl and Tk, and
 as such the ticker and roll animations often run slowly on slow machines.

 Agentk and all of the software have been used on a wide variety of Unix
 platforms and versions (SunOS, Solaris, Linux, etc).  The Agentk toolkit
 has been used with Windows 95 and 98, but some of the programs have not
 been used with them and some (most notably checklpq) use Unix commands
 and will not work on Windows machines without some modification.

 Agentk can make use of various additional packages.  Necessary for Agentk
 (and included with the distribution) is Jeff Hobbs' widget package, which
 simplifies the creation of new Tk widgets.  Optional is Jan Nijtmans' Img
 package, which extends the types of images that can be used in the
 widgets.

 --
 D. Scott McCrickard
 mccricks@cc.gatech.edu
 http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mccricks/