Fifth Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop, 1997
Caubweb: Detaching the Web with Tcl
John R. LoVerso and Murray S. Mazer
The Open Group Research Institute
Cambridge, MA
Abstract
Caubweb is a research system that allows a user to create local
collections of Web documents on the user's computer, for access to those
collections when disconnected. The system is part of a project
investigating ways to provide adaptive, ongoing read and update
interaction with Web-based information, even under conditions of
variable or intermittent network connectivity. Caubweb is
architecturally an HTTP proxy augmented with value-adding capabilities.
To accommodate our design principles of platform-portability and
extensibility, we used Tcl as our implementation language. This paper
reports on our experience in using Tcl/Tk to build Caubweb. We discuss
the structure of our implementation, identify strengths and weaknesses
of the language and its tools, contrast Tcl/Tk with alternatives, and
present a "call to arms" for the Tcl/Tk community, to promote increased
reuse and cooperation.
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