ttkdraw: Tom's Tcl/Tk-based Drawing Program

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Tom's TkDraw is currently in beta release. It is my own personal drawing program and original Tcl/Tk project which I started more than ten years ago. It's grown to the point where it is too useful not to release. This is a beta release, as a precaution, since no one but me has ever used it before. You can get an idea of many of the features just by looking at the screen shot at right (click on it to get the fullsize screenshot). A more complete list is below.

The program is object-based -- You can move individual objects around, change their shape or size, rotate them, and raise or lower them in the stack of objects. Limited support for images was just added, and is great for tracing an image, or adding some annotations to an image (for instance drawing a route onto a map without actually altering the map image).

Feature List

• drag, reshape, and resize objects
• raise and lower objects
• objects can be grouped into a single meta-object
• recursive grouping is permitted (groups within groups)
• most objects can be rotated
• objects can be "nailed down" to prevent accidental changes
• gridded drawing, with arbitrary grid sizes
• cut, copy and paste
• color palette selector (available as separate package too!)
• limited support for images (good for tracing, or overlays)
• saves in Tcl script format, or in PostScript
• tab completion in file dialogs (available as a separate package!)
• built-in help

Known Bugs

Yes, there are some.

The Future

• scrollbars on drawing area
• info window
• user-definable command bindings
• global clipboard shared between ttkdraw processes
• improve (provide :-) error messages
• generate grey level bitmaps on the fly
• build in interface bitmaps
• dump to other graphics formats (rely on locally installed screen grabbers)
• undo

My recumbent folder was drawn with this program. So was the cow to the left. I'm sure someone with more talent and patience than I have can do things which are much more dramatic. (If you are such a person, I'm looking for one good piece of artwork to display here as an example!)

It's great for creating original art, as well as diagramming. The gridding abilities are great for laying out a floor plan and positioning furniture on it, as shown at the bottom of this web page.

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