Sun releases Navigator plug-in for its Tcl scripting
language
By Yvonne L. Lee
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 1:08 PM PT, Jul 12, 1996
Firing another round in the browser wars, Sun Microsystems Inc. Thursday released a Netscape
Navigator plug-in that enables Tcl applications to be run from within the browser.
Tcl is a scripting language written by John Ousterhout, now an engineer at Sun Microsystems
Laboratories. The language has been used for six years in the Unix world and is now available for
the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.
Tcl is comparable to Microsoft Corp.'s Visual Basic in that it is a scripting language designed for
small applications or for linking applications written in other languages, Ousterhout said. Unlike
Visual Basic, Tcl is an interpreted language, so the instructions are read each time they are
executed and cannot be run unless invoked by the browser or some other external source.
Therefore, the language is more secure in a networked environment than a compiled language, such
as Visual Basic, he said.
Tcl scripts could previously be included in Web applications using the CGI (Common Gateway
Interface), but these applications were restricted to the server. Now, with the new Navigator
plug-in, Tcl scripts can run on the client as well. This offers a better option for Tcl scripts that are
being executed on the client that deal with user interface or client data, officials said.
The Tcl plug-in is available now for Solaris, the MacOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT. A
Windows 3.1 version is due later this year, Ousterhout said, and versions of the plug-in for other
Unix systems are also planned.
Both the Tcl plug-in and a beta version of a software developer's kit are available free on Sun's
Web site at sun.com. Future versions of the developers' kit will continue to be free to
individuals or schools, but not for corporations. |
