Tac is a pure Tcl terminal only version of AOL Instant Messenger. Tac doesn't require Tk or a X display, and can be run on most terminals with no problem. However since it is put Tcl, and doesn't even use curses, line editing is limited. Currently some features are missing from Tac, when compared to TiK, but it will hopefully catch up at some point.

Download the TAC distribution from http://users.tmok.com/~smike and install.

Tac, pronounced /tack/, currently stands for "Tac, another client" for lack of a better acronym. Really it just has to do with the members of the TicToc project obsession with useless 3 letter meaningless words.

Tac is pure Tcl and doesn't use curses or tput. Since Tac needs to buffer output while you are typing in commands, we switch the terminal into raw mode from cooked mode. This causes problems with many terminals unfortunately.

One option would be to start using curses, but at this point in time there are no "simple" interfaces between Tcl and curses. Another option would be to use tput directly, which may be investigated at some time. A final option might be to use one of the GNU readline extensions to tcl, but then Tac would no longer be "pure".

Send me some Tcl code and I would be more then happy to add it to Tac. Basically Tac is supported by one person, very, very, part-timeish. It has all the features that I require, and not much more. I love to receive source or example contributions.

Send all contributions or questions to smike@users.tmok.com. Please also state if you want your name/email address mentioned as a contributor. If no mention is made, by default I will not give out your name or email address for privacy reasons. This policy is opposite of many open source projects.