Tailoring SpecTcl's splash screen.

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A splash screen is an introductory window that pops up while a program is initializing. Splash screens usually have the following attributes:

• Splash screens lack borders and menus.
• Splash screens contain a graphic that identifies the program.
• Splash screens often have credit text
• Splash screens often have progress indicators that track the progress of the initialization

SpecTcl now incorporates a splash screen package. The package is open source re-distributed under the license terms. The copyright holder of the package is the "Swedish Institute of Computer Science". I would like ot acknowledge and thank them for releasing this package into the open source freely redistributable domain.

The SpecTclRC.tcl file in $SpecTclHome/Skel, as of version 3.2 creates and initializes a splash screen. The following lines of code setup the initial splash screen:

lappend auto_path $SpecTclHome/TclLibs
package require splash
package require img::jpeg



set splash [splash::new -text 1 -imgfile $splashImage -progress 6 -hidemain 0]
splash::progress $splash {Loading button bar} 0


    

The splash screen can be tailored in several ways; we'll mention two here:

• The image on the splash screen can be modified by setting the splashImage variable in SpecTclInit.tcl (or previously in SpecTclRC.tcl) to be the name of the image file.
• The number of divisions of progress and the advancement of the progress indicator can be controlled. More on this below.

Splash screen progress indicators and text can be tailored as follows:

1. In the splash::new command modify the number following the -progress switch to reflect the number of initialization steps you want the progress indicator to reflect.
2. Add splash::progress commands whenever you want to update the progress bar and/or the progess text. This command should have the following form:

   splash::progress $splash progress_text  progress_increment
         

   Where:
   • progress_text is the new progress status text you want to display, for example {Initializing experiment gui
   • progress_increment is the number of steps you want the progress bar to make. This can be zero (and I think even negative).



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Last modified: Mon Apr 9 11:33:30 EDT 2007