NAME

Tk::Zinc - TkZinc is another Canvas which proposes many new functions, some based on openGL

SYNOPSIS

$zinc = $parent->Zinc(?options?);

DESCRIPTION

Zinc widget is very similar to Tk Canvase in that it supports structured graphics. Like the Canvas, TkZinc implements items used to display graphical entities. Those items can be manipulated and bindings can be associated with them to implement interaction behaviors. But unlike the Canvas, TkZinc can structure the items in a hierarchy (with the use of group items), has support for affine 2D transforms (i.e. translation, scaling, and rotation), clipping can be set for sub-trees of the item hierarchy, the item set is quite more powerful including field specific items for Air Traffic systems and new rendering techniques such as transparency and gradients.

Since the 3.2.2 version, TkZinc also offers as a runtime option, the support for openGL rendering, giving access to features such as antialiasing, transparency, color gradients and even a new, openGL oriented, item type triangles.

TkZinc full documentation is available as part of the Zinc software as a pdf file, refman.pdf and html pages refman/index.html.

As a complement to the reference manual, small Perl/Tk demos of TkZinc are also available through a small application named zinc-demos, highly inspired from the widget application included in Tk. The aim of these demos are both to demonstrates the power of TkZinc and to help newcomers start using TkZinc with small examples.

WHERE CAN I FIND TkZinc?

TkZinc is available as source in tar.gz format or as Debian or RedHat/Mandrake packages at http://www.openatc.org/zinc or http://freshmeat.net/projects/zincisnotcanvas/

TkZinc is also available on CPAN since v3.294 (a kind of 3.2.94)

AUTHOR

Patrick Lecoanet <lecoanet@cena.fr>

COPYRIGHT

Zinc has been developed by the CENA (Centres d'Etudes de la Navigation Aérienne) for its own needs in advanced HMI (Human Machine Interfaces or Interactions). Because we are confident in the benefit of free software, the CENA delivered this toolkit under the GNU Library General Public License.

This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library General Public License for more details.

Parts of this software are derived from the Tk toolkit which is copyrighted under another open source license by The Regents of the University of California and Sun Microsystems, Inc. The GL font rendering is derived from Mark Kilgard code described in `A Simple OpenGL-based API for Texture Mapped Text' and is copyrighted by Mark Kilgard under an open source license.

SEE ALSO

Tk(1), zinc-demos(1).