Re: EMC Cookbook

["Arne Chr.Jorgensen" <instel-at-online.no>]

Dan Falck wrote:

> I would like to help if possible.  Right now, I am just a user of EMC, but
> would like to develop my own blend/interface for it as soon as I can learn
> more about TCL/Tk.

I don't know what you have in mind.  I have been in contact with Fred Proctor
and
Matt Shaver about a program  written in Tcl/Tk that will read in a DXF file,
and
display it.  What we would like to do, would be to make it output Gcode , plus
some
simple  CAM stuff.  I have played around with it, and I don't like it.
The reason is that the canvas uses the left upper corner as the origin, while
most
CAD programs uses the left bottom corner for this.  Then I investigated a bit
on a
small library called Vogle,  that has some of the feature I would like.  The
next
question would be if this could be called from tcl/tk.  I have been in touch
with
one that wrote a program called TclVogel,  many years ago while he was working

at Berkeley.  It is a clever kind of program. It is a program that builds a
program. It
will intercept any cmds from tcl/tk to the Xlib, and use Vogel instead.  But
it was
written for some of the first tcl/tk interpreters.  I have tried to rewrite
parts, and used
a newer version of Tcl/Tk, but I have not moved it to the the latest versions,
as I still
have problems to figure out how it is supposed to build ( was done on a  sparc
station,
and I have tried to map this to Linux - but I am not familiar with
sparcstations - so I have
some difficulties )

I have managed to track down the author, but he could not help. He had too
much to do,
and would consider doing the job for a fee, - but I am broke.  Anyway if this
is of any
interest, then I will mail the correspondence I have had on the subject.  But
this library
will give you a lot of nice features,  among them 3d routines, etc.

I am not any good at programming, - and I do not have any knowledge of what
would be
nice things to look out for in a graphical package.

But reading some of the stuff that Thomas R. Kramer have done ( example MRSEV
)-
then I have taken another look at VARKON.  ( I think this could be a nice
merger )



> Right now, I'm overbooked in the shop and would just
> like a little time off to study the code.

The common problem we all face.


//ARNE