tkWWW

Joseph Wang announced in July 1992 that he was developing a web browser based on Tk, and made the alpha version 0.1 publicly available.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tkWWW-0.1|url=http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992JulAug/0034.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=24 November 2010|date=25 July 1992}}

Version 0.4 integrated a much easier installation procedure, a better default color scheme, keyboard traversals and a history mechanism.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Announcing tkWWW release 0.4|url=http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992SepOct/0023.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=16 November 2010|date=18 October 1992}} Version 0.5, released 8 February 1993, introduced support for multiple fonts.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Announcing tkWWW Version 0.5 Alpha|url=http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0145.html|publisher=1977.webhistory.org|access-date=16 November 2010|date=8 February 1993}}

Version 0.6 made personal annotations compatible with xmosaic and improved the GUI.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Announcing tkWWW Version 0.6 alpha|url=http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0273.html|publisher=The World Wide Web History Project|access-date=16 November 2010|date=18 March 1993}}{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Version 0.6 | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/v0.6.html|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}

With the release of version 0.7 on 1 May 1993, tkWWW became the first WYSIWYG HTML editor for X11{{cite book|last1=Liu|first1=Cricket|first2=Jerry|last2=Peek|first3=Russ|last3=Jones|title=Managing Internet information services|date=December 1994|publisher=O'Reilly Media|isbn=978-1-56592-062-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/managinginternet00jerr/page/292 292]|url=https://archive.org/details/managinginternet00jerr|url-access=registration}} which was originally written by Nathan Torkington.{{cite web|last=Torkington|first=Nathan|title=HTML Editing|url=http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0105.html|publisher=The World Wide Web History Project|access-date=30 November 2010|date=17 April 1993}}{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Re: HTML Editing|url=http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0105.html|publisher=The World Wide Web History Project|access-date=30 November 2010|date=17 April 1993}} Another improvement was the ability to start in iconic mode.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Announcing tkWWW 0.7, the first WYWSIWYG X11 HTML editor|url=http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0214.html|publisher=The World Wide Web History Project|access-date=16 November 2010|date=1 May 1993}}{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Version 0.7 | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/v0.7.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|access-date=2024-11-23}}

Version 0.8 improved the graphical user interface (GUI) and added a "reload" option.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Version 0.8 | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/v0.8.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}

In version 0.9, the browser achieved beta status and added support for character-styling tags and for version 7.0 of Tcl, as well as partial support for image tags.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Version 0.9 | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/v0.9.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tkWWW Version 0.9 beta (joe@athena.mit.edu)|url=ftp://ftp.starhub.net.sg/pub/funet/languages/tcl/contrib/harbor/extensions/tkWWW-0.9.README|access-date=22 November 2010}}

Version 0.11 worked successfully with RCS{{Dubious|RCS vs Browser|date=May 2011}}.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=ANNOUNCING tkWWW-0.11|url=http://web6.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/ksi/archives/WWW-TALK/www-talk-1994q2.messages/346.html|publisher=University of Calgary|access-date=22 November 2010|date=26 April 1994|archive-date=6 July 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110706210426/http://web6.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/ksi/archives/WWW-TALK/www-talk-1994q2.messages/346.html|url-status=dead}}

Based on the newly released Tk 4.0, tkWWW 0.13 was an alpha release, in order to allow for wider testing. It also added full support for inline images.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=ANNOUNCE: Beta version of tkWWW-0.13 is available|url=http://www.w3.org/Tools/tkWWW.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=16 November 2010|date=2 April 1995}}

Support for HTML+, a proposed successor to HTML 2, was implemented while the specification was being developed.{{cite web|last=Connolly|first=Dan|author-link=Dan Connolly (computer scientist)|title=HTML 2.0 Materials|url=http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=16 November 2010|date=28 September 1999}}

tkWWW was extended by the GNU Guile project, to support Scheme extensions.{{cite web|last=Lord|first=Thomas|title=An Anatomy of Guile The Interface to Tcl/Tk|url=https://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/tcl95/full_papers/lord.ps|work=Third Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop|publisher=Usenix|access-date=23 November 2010|location=Toronto, Ontario, Canada|format=PostScript|date=July 1995}}

The short-term agenda for tkWWW included an SGML parser{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tkWWW TODO list | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/todo.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}} and the separation of the browser from the editor,{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Working notes......... | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/local/notes.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}} in order to simplify user experience.{{cite web|first1=Nick|last1=Williams|first2=Tim|last2=Wilkinson|title=Experiences in Writing a WYSIWYG Editor for HTML|url=http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PapersWWW94/njw.ps|publisher=CERN|access-date=22 November 2010|format=PostScript|date=15 April 1994}}

The long-term plan included new functions like word processing, directory navigation, file transfer, and news and email reading.

• With the htext-widget, Tk code could be embedded into web pages.
• Because the interface was written in Tk, it was easy to modify and extend the system.{{cite web|last=Fischer|first=Christian|title=Konzeption eines Werkzeugs zur Erfassung von Betreiberanforderungen an ein integriertes Netz- und Systemmanagement|url=http://wwwhegering.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/pub/Diplomarbeiten/fisc95/Postscript-Version/fisc95.ps.gz|work=Diplomarbeit|publisher=Technische Universität München|access-date=27 November 2010|language=de|page=97|format=PostScript|date=15 February 1995|archive-date=19 July 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719100320/http://wwwhegering.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/pub/Diplomarbeiten/fisc95/Postscript-Version/fisc95.ps.gz|url-status=dead}}
• A WYSIWYG editor for HTML web pages, with all major HTML functions (character emphasis, headings, paragraph breaks, lists, anchors){{cite web|last=Berners-Lee|first=Tim|title=May World-Wide Web News|url=http://www.w3.org/News/9305.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=16 November 2010|date=May 1992}}
• Support for many protocols: FTP,{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=Demos of tkWWW multimedia capabilities | url = http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/demos.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}} gopher,{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=History of tkWWW | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/history.html |publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}} HTTP, telnet
• Multiple fonts, including support for Asian fonts{{cite web|last=Yee|first=Ka-Ping|title=Displaying Japanese on the WWW|url=http://lfw.org/text/jp-disp.html|access-date=22 November 2010|date=3 May 1996}}{{cite web|last=TAKADA|first=Toshihiro|title=WWW Browsers that can display Japanese|url=http://www.ntt.co.jp/japan/note-on-JP/browsers.html|publisher=Nippon Telegraph and Telephone|access-date=28 November 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980208020014/http://www.ntt.co.jp/japan/note-on-JP/browsers.html|archive-date=8 February 1998|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}
• Multimedia formats supported: bitmap, DVI, GIF MPEG, PostScript, and X Window dump files
• Automatic file unpacking{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tkWWW as a replacement for FTP | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/ftp.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}

tkWWW was developed before the advent of Safe-Tcl, to allow untrusted applications to run from non-privileged accounts. Without such a safeguard, the potential for automatically executing remote scripts was a security issue.{{cite web|last=Ball|first=Steve|title=SurfIt! - A WWW Browser|url=https://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/tcl96/full_papers/ball/ball.ps|work=Fourth USENIX Tcl/Tk Workshop|publisher=USENIX|access-date=28 November 2010|location=Monterey, California|format=PostScript|date=10–13 July 1996}}

tkWWW was criticized for not supporting the mailto URI scheme, rlogin, WAIS, and HTML forms. A stop-button to interrupt the transfer of web pages was also not integrated.Ian S. Graham, The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML, p. 327.

File:tkWWWrobot.svg

Because tkWWW was based on the Tk framework, it was very easy to expand its functions and to extend its capabilities. Indeed, there were several extensions and applications based on tkWWW.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tk applications | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}

Phoenix was a well-known web browser and editor, created at the University of Chicago in the Biological Sciences Division, that was built on tkWWW version 0.9.{{cite web|title=The Phoenix Project: Distributed Hypermedia Authoring|url=http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PapersWWW94/j-kruper.ps|work=World Wide Web Conference 1|publisher=CERN|access-date=19 November 2010|last1=Lavenant|first1=Marc G.|last2=Kruper|first2=John A.|location=University of Chicago|format=PostScript|date=25–27 May 1994}}{{cite journal|first1=John A.|last1=Kruper|first2=Marc G.|last2=Lavenant|first3=Manisha H.|last3=Maskay|first4=Thomas M.|last4=Jones|title=Building Internet Accessible Medical Education Software Using the World Wide Web|pmc=2247761|publisher=University of Chicago|year=1994|pmid=7949942|journal=Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care|pages=32–6}}{{cite web|last=Virden|first=Larry W.|title=comp.lang.tcl Frequently Asked Questions (July 26, 2006) (4/6)|url=http://tcl.sourceforge.net/faqs/tcl/part4.html|publisher=SourceForge|access-date=16 November 2010|date=26 July 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110404065153/http://tcl.sourceforge.net/faqs/tcl/part4.html|archive-date=4 April 2011|df=dmy-all}}  Development began in the summer of 1993, when there weren't any easy-to-use web-page editors available.README of Phoenix-0.1.8 Alpha release (released 15 May 1995); available here [http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/www/tools/editing/unix/phoenix/phoenix-0.1.8.tar.gz] Development ceased in May 1995, there being a variety of similar tools available. 

The main new features were: improved HTML+ support, deeper integration of features such as copy and paste and native look-and-feel, and support for the Kerberos protocol by modified servers. The browser was supported on MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and on Linux and other Unix systems.{{cite web |title=Announcing Phoenix, A Genuinely-WYSIWYG HTML Editor |url=http://http.bsd.uchicago.edu/~l-newberg/phoenix-0.1.8.html |first=Lee A. |last=Newberg |publisher=The University of Chicago |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19981202063453/http://http.bsd.uchicago.edu/~l-newberg/phoenix-0.1.8.html |archive-date=2 December 1998 |date=12 May 1995}} Further development would have added support for BSD platforms.

The short-term plan for tkWWW was to separate the editing and browsing functions, as had already been accomplished for Phoenix.{{cite journal|last=Mintert|first=Stefan|title=Weberknechte|url=http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/Weberknechte-505144.html|publisher=Heinz Heise|access-date=22 November 2010|journal=Ix 08/1995|date=17 July 1995 |volume=1995 |issue=8 |language=de|page=54}} Inline-image support for GIFs and ISMAPs were also already integrated in the first version of Phoenix.

The ability to access Multi-user Object-Oriented (MOO) or Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) servers was requested as a new package for tkWWW, and this was delivered by the Phoenix team.{{cite web|last=Berners-Lee|first=Tim|title=MOOs and WWW|url=http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/MOO-WWW.html|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|access-date=16 November 2010}}{{Cite conference | first1 = Lee A. | last1 = Newberg | first2 = Richard O. | last2 = Rouse III | first3 = John A. | last3 = Kruper | title = Integrating the World-Wide Web and Multi-User Domains to Support Advanced Network-Based Learning Environments | book-title = Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia | publisher = Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education | year = 1995 | location = Graz, Austria | url = http://www.rpi.edu/~newbel/publications/NewbergRouseKruper1994.pdf | archive-date = 4 July 2009 | access-date = 23 September 2011 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090704182007/http://www.rpi.edu/~newbel/publications/NewbergRouseKruper1994.pdf | df = dmy-all }}{{cite web|first2=Carter|last2=Butts|first3=Colman|last3=Reilly|first4=Marcus|last4=Speh|first1=Joseph|last1=Wang|title=WWW and the Globewide Network Academy|url=http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PapersWWW94/speh.ps|publisher=Globewide Network Academy|access-date=28 November 2010|location=Texas|format=PostScript|year=1993}}

===The TkWWW Robot===

File:TkWWW Robot.gif

Scott Spetka presented a paper at the Mosaic and the Web Conference in Chicago entitled "The TkWWW Robot" in October 1994.{{cite web|last=Spetka|first=Scott|title=The TkWWW Robot: Beyond Browsing|url=http://www.cs.sunyit.edu/Robots/www94.html|publisher=National Center for Supercomputing Applications|access-date=20 November 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010724031925/http://www.cs.sunyit.edu/Robots/www94.html|archive-date=24 July 2001|date=17 October 1994|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}{{cite web|title=Submission Robots Index|url=http://www.hostsun.com/gr/bots_index8.php|publisher=Hostsun|access-date=20 November 2010|year=2002}}

TkWWW robot was one of the first web crawlers and internet bots based on tkWWW. It was developed over the summer at the Air Force Rome Laboratory, with funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research,{{cite web|first1=Christopher C.|last1=Yang|first2=Jerome|last2=Yen|first3=Hsinchun|last3=Chen|title=Intelligent internet searching agent based on hybrid simulated annealing|url=http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/106492/1/yang2.pdf|publisher=Elsevier|access-date=28 November 2010|year=2000}} to build HTML indexes, compile WWW statistics, collect image portfolios, etc.  TkWWW robot's major advantage was its flexibility in adapting to virtually any criteria to guide its search path and to control its selection of data for retrieval.{{cite journal|last1=Khosravi|first1=Fariborz|first2=Tajalmolouk|last2=Arjomand|title=The new Era in Intelligent Agent Design Using Genetic Algorithms Approach|journal=Faslname-ye Ketab|publisher=National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran|issue=53|issn=1022-6451|url=http://www.nlai.ir/Portals/2/files/faslname/53/En-Content.pdf|access-date=27 November 2010|archive-date=4 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604005032/http://www.nlai.ir/Portals/2/files/faslname/53/En-Content.pdf|url-status=dead}}

The search algorithm worked by identifying "web neighborhoods" — finding logically related homepages. The bot returned a list of links in the form of bookmarks. It was limited, however, in that it could include only two links from the original homepages.

tkWWW was originally developed for Unix but would run on any modern operating system where Tcl/Tk is properly installed.{{cite web|title=UNIX WWW BROWSERS|url=https://www.utoronto.ca/web/HTMLdocs/UNIXTOOLS/unix_browsers.html|publisher=University of Toronto|access-date=22 November 2010|archive-date=30 October 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101030225440/http://www.utoronto.ca/web/HTMLdocs/UNIXTOOLS/unix_browsers.html|url-status=dead}}README-file of the tkWWW-0.13pre2 package. To display images, tkWWW requires the xli package.

tkWWW has two strictly separated processes: one for the GUI, and another for network interaction and for parsing HTML.{{cite web|last=Wang|first=Joseph|title=tkWWWInternals | url = https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/internals.html | publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology | access-date = 2024-11-23}}  The latter is compiled C code based on the CERN libwww library. The front-end GUI is written in Tcl/Tk, which is interpreted at run time.

{{Portal|Free and open-source software|internet}}

• History of the World Wide Web
• Tkhtml

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

{{commons category|TkWWW Browser}}

• [http://www.filewatcher.com/_/?q=tkwww Filewatcher.com tkWWW packages on the different ftp servers]{{dead link|date=September 2019}}
• [https://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/other/cdsdev/html/tk-www/help/ tkWWW help]

{{Early web browsers}}

{{web browsers}}

{{HTML editors}}

{{gopher clients}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tkwww}}

Category:1992 software

Category:Discontinued web browsers

Category:Free HTML editors

Category:Gopher clients

Category:Free software programmed in Tcl

Category:Free web browsers

Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology software

Category:Software that uses Tk (software)