             Tcl Distributed Programming (Tcl-DP)
               (Version 3.4beta2; April 2, 1996)

		      Brian C. Smith
		Department of Computer Science
		    Cornell University

		     Lawrence A. Rowe
               Computer Science Division-EECS
             University of California at Berkeley

This directory contains a freely distributable extension to Tcl/Tk
called Tcl Distributed Programming (Tcl-DP).  Tcl-DP adds TCP, UDP, and
IP-multicast connection management, remote procedure call (RPC),
distributed object protocols, and a name server to Tcl/Tk.  A C
interface to the RPC primitives is also provided.  Unlike the "send"
command of Tk, Tcl-DP does not require that Tcl/Tk processes that want
to communicate share an X server because Tcl-DP is built directly upon
TCP/IP.

BACKGROUND

Tcl stands for the Tool Command Language, a freely distributable,
embeddable scripting language package.  Tk is an freely distributable X
windows interface toolkit and widget library implemented by a
collection of new commands added to Tcl.  Information about Tcl/Tk is
available by anonymous ftp from sprite.berkeley.edu [128.32.150.27].
Tcl-DP was originally developed for Tcl 6.5 and Tk 3.0.  Tcl-DP Version
3.4 is compatible with Tcl 7.4 and Tk 4.0.

This distribution contains a binary release of Tcl-DP, html and man
pages that describe the commands, and a short tutorial.  Tcl-DP is
available by anonymous ftp from
	http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/Projects/Tcl-DP.html
Source code to this distribution is also available by following the
"Download" link on this page.  If you compile Tcl-DP to a new
architecture and want to share the compiled binary, edit the OS
variable in the Makefile, run "make distrib", put the resulting file
name *.tgz in a public FTP site, and send mail to Brian Smith
(bsmith@cs.cornell.edu).

INSTALLING/USING TCL-DP

To install Tcl-DP:

+) Modify the install script as described in the comments of that file.

To learn how to use Tcl-DP:

+) Print and read the tutorial (tutorial.ps).  An on-line version
   of that tutorial is available at
   http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/Tcl-DP/Tutorial/tutorial.html

+) Scan the man pages to see what's available.  Use the "man" subdirectory
   or "html/dp_index.html" as a starting point.  An on-line version
   of the manual is available at
   http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/Tcl-DP/html/dp_index.html

To report bugs, bug fixes, descriptions of interesting Tcl-DP 
applications, and suggested improvements:

+) Send email to tcl-dp@CS.Cornell.EDU.

or

+) Post an article in the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup.

We extend our thanks to everyone who helped to create, debug, and
distribute this software.  Although there are too many people to mention
at this point, the following people deserve special attention:

  John Ousterhout, creator of Tcl/Tk; 
  Pekka Nikander, creator of tcpConnect;
  Tim MacKenzie, creator of tclRawTCP;
  Lou Salkind, ported Tcl-DP to Tcl 7.0/Tk 3.3
  R Lindsay Todd, developed security mechanism
  Peter Liu, developed extended name server code
  Ulla Bartsich, integrated many changes into Tcl-DP 3.3
  Mike Grafton, wrote extensive test suites for Tcl-DP
  Jon Knight, wrote IP-multicast extensions to Tcl-DP
  Gordon Chaffee, ported Tcl-DP to Windows-NT
  Mike Perham, integrated many changes into Tcl-DP 3.4
