TKInter system requirements

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

tdixon at linux.the-dixons.net (Tim Dixon) wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Aug 2000 23:06:13 GMT, John Grayson posted:
> >In article <slrn8qqs9v.6ct.tdixon at the-dixons.net>,
> >Been there, seen that, got the T-shirt...
> >
> >Forget DOS, and your only path, I believe, would be to run 3.1 on
> >DOS 6.2 with win32.dll (if you can still find it). Then, you might
> >be able to use Tcl 7.4 with Tk 4.0. Then you'd need an ancient
> >Python (Tkinter.py and Modules/(_)tkinter.c)...
> >
> 
> So... no. :)

If you skip Python and write it in elisp, it will run fine
under DOS as well as Linux, VMS, Windoze, ...  as long as
they are willing to install Emacs.  Of course, the widgets
will only be graphical when running under Win32 or X; the
rest of the time you get text-based widgets (and not the
best text-based widgets I've ever seen, either; OTOH you
do get colours (well, 16 colours) in DOS; in a GUI you get
whatever level of colour is available, of course).  If the 
project involves a lot of text manipulation it might be 
worth it.  Otherwise probably not.  Text manipulation is
the main thing elisp is good at doing.

Actually, it would not be THAT much harder to port Tk 
to DOS than to any other system, if someone wanted to
take the time to do it...  there's nothing inherent
in DOS that limits that kind of functionality.  It's
just that there's no native API to support it, either,
so Tk would have to draw stuff itself.  Unless you
find an existing DOS widget set (there are some good
ones, but I don't know if the licenses are suitable) 
and build on it.

- jonadab