Intro to Tklog

Each entry can be tagged with an author's name, a type, and a site name. The list of authors, types, and site names can be chosen from pop-down menus. These menus can be customized for each logbook.

The entries are displayed in chronological order. The logbook can be searched by type, site name or by simple word matching.

Graphic images in PNG, GIF or JPEG form can also be merged into the logbook and associated with a logbook entry. A separate application (xv or netscape) is needed to display the images.

tklog is written in TK/TCL and TCLx, and has been used under Linux and Solaris. It should run in any system which supports TK/TCL and TCLx. tklog almost works on Windows, but we haven't found a Windows version of wishx, the TCLx windowing shell.

tklog is not a web application, though the logbook can be converted to HTML and displayed in a read-only form on a web page. Use the tklog_html script to convert the logbook to HTML form.

No support for simultaneous updates is provided. In other words, only one user at a time may have a logbook open for writing. Other users who wish to access the same logbook simultaneously must view it in a read-only mode.

The tklog_extract and tklog_merge scripts are useful for updating a remote, read-only version of a logbook over a low-bandwidth link. Use tklog_extract to extract new or updated entries from the writable logbook and tklog_merge to merge the new entries into the remote read-only version. Use the tklog_append script to append entries to the end of a logbook.

Download

Author

Known Bugs

• If you make a change to a keyword field of an entry (title, author, type, or site), tklog does not detect that you changed the entry and will not keep your changes. You must type some text into the text area in order for tklog to notice your changes.

Support and Other Software

The tklog web page (this file) is at http://www.atd.ucar.edu/software/tklog.

See the ORNL Electronic Notebook Project for a more ambitious notebook application.

Install Instructions

These instructions assume you have a downloaded a file called tklog.tar.gz.

1. Decide where you want to put tklog. A typical place would be
   in /usr/local.  The installation consists of a directory
   called tklog, containing several small TK/TCL scripts,
   and a subdirectory, libtcl, containing the main TK/TCL code.

    tklog
      tklog_append
      tklog_extract
      tklog_html
      tklog_install
      tklog_merge
      tklog_print

      libtcl
	graphics.tcl
	html.tcl
	paradox.tcl
	tklog.tcl


   The tklog scripts expect to find a libtcl subdirectory in their
   own directory, so you must keep this directory structure intact
   when installing.

   Users usually do not execute the tklog scripts directly.  Instead,
   the installer (you!) provides a script which sets an environment
   variable, TKLOG_PATH, specifying the name of the directory containing
   the logbook, and then executes tklog. See step 5 and tklog_example_script.

   One can also create symbolic links from the TK/TCL scripts in the
   tklog directory to a directory in the user's path, like /usr/local/bin.
 
2. Change directory to where you want to put tklog, for example:
	cd /usr/local

3. untar it with GNU tar:
	tar xzvf tklog.tar.gz	
   or gunzip and unix tar:
   	gunzip -c tklog.tar.gz | tar xvf -

4. Run the tklog_install script. This creates a tclIndex file
   in the libtcl directory which is needed by the scripts.

   	./tklog_install

5. Create a script for users to run tklog. See tklog_example_script
   for an example.  Put this script in the users PATH, and make
   it executable:

	cp tklog_example_script /usr/local/bin/field_log
   	chmod +x /usr/local/bin/field_log

6. You're done.  Encourage field project staff to document everything
   they do!