Tcl 8.0/Tk 8.0 Release Announcement
August 18, 1997

John Ousterhout
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
john.ousterhout@eng.sun.com

This message is to announce the 8.0 releases of the Tcl scripting
language and the Tk toolkit.  These are major releases with many
exciting new features, including the following:

- Tcl has a new bytecode compiler that improves performance by a factor
  of 2-10x.
- Tcl now has namespaces for structuring variables and procedures.
- Binary data is now supported in Tcl.
- The Safe-Tcl security model has been fleshed out and improved in
  many ways.  It provides the most flexible approach to security for
  Internet applications available anywhere.
- The Windows registry is now supported.
- A package "http" is available for making HTTP requests.
- Tk now provides native look and feel on Macintosh and Windows platforms.
  Tcl and Tk now provide the best cross-platform development platform
  available anywhere.
- Fonts and menus have been improved to provide much better cross-platform
  support.
- Text widgets allow images to be embedded directly in the text.

There are a few incompatibilities introduced by these releases (hence the
change in major version number) but they are small and should not affect
most scripts.  See the Tcl/Tk 8.0 Web page for more information on both
the new features and the incompatibilities:
	http://sunscript.sun.com/TclTkCore/8.0.html

Where to get the new releases:
------------------------------

Tcl 8.0 and Tk 8.0 are currently available by public FTP from
ftp.sunlabs.com in the directory /pub/tcl.  The easiest way to
retrieve them is via the Web page for the 8.0 releases:
	http://sunscript.sun.com/TclTkCore/8.0.html

For additional information:
---------------------------

See the Web site for SunScript, the Sun team dedicated to Tcl and Tk.
This site contains a variety of information about Tcl/Tk in general, the
core Tcl and Tk distributions, and applications such as SpecTcl and the
Tcl plugin.  Visit the following URL:
    http://sunscript.sun.com

Credits:
--------

Virtually everyone in SunScript contributed to the Tcl 8.0 and Tk 8.0
releases.  Here is a list of a few of the most important contributions
and the people who made them:

Bytecode compiler, namespaces:		Brian Lewis
PC port (native look and feel etc.):	Scott Stanton
Win32s support:				Colin Stevens
Mac port (native look and feel etc.):	Ray Johnson, Jim Ingham
Font mechanism:				Colin Stevens
Native menus:				Syd Polk
Safe-Tcl improvements:			Jacob Levy, Laurent Demailly,
					Brent Welch
Application embedding:			John Ousterhout, Scott Stanton,
					Ray Johnson, Jim Ingham
Http library:				Brent Welch
Text images, gridder support:		Stephen Uhler
Binary I/O, fcopy:			Scott Stanton