NAME

       trf-intro - Introduction to Trf

SYNOPSIS

       package require Tcl  ?8.2?

       package require Trf  ?2.1.3?

DESCRIPTION

       The  package  Trf  provides  a  number  of  commands which take data and transform them in
       various ways.

BACKGROUND

       The implementation of Trf began as proof-of-concept of the validity and usefulness of  the
       "stacked  channel"  patches  to the core. These patches allow the writing of extensions to
       the generic I/O system of the core which are able to intercept all  read/write  operations
       on  designated  channels, thus giving it the ability to transform the data flowing through
       these channels as desired.

       This allows things like transparent encryption, compression, charset recoding, etc.

       Since version 8.2 of the tcl core the aforementioned patches are  part  of  the  tcl  core
       itself,  changing  the  status  of  trf from "extension requiring core patches" to "normal
       extension".

       Other packages built upon either the stackd channels directly, or Trf are:

       [1]    TrfCrypt, by myself, contains various encryption systems

       [2]    TLS, an SSL/TLS implementation by Matt Newman.

       [3]    Tcl MIME by Marshall Rose.

API

       The commands provide by trf can be placed into the three  categories  listed  below.  Note
       that all commands are added to the global namespace.

       Encodings
              The  encoding  commands  either  take some data and return the same data in encoded
              form, or take encoded data and return a decoded result.

              [1]    oct

              [2]    hex

              [3]    oct

              [4]    base64

              [5]    uuencode

              [6]    ascii85

              [7]    otp_words

              [8]    quoted-printable

       Message Digests
              The second category are message digests in  general,  simple  ones  like  crc,  and
              cryptographically strong algorithms like md5.

              [1]    crc-zlib

              [2]    crc

              [3]    adler

              [4]    md2

              [5]    md5

              [6]    md5_otp

              [7]    sha

              [8]    sha1

              [9]    sha1_otp

              [10]   haval

              [11]   ripemd-160

              [12]   ripemd-128

       Miscellaneous
              At  last a number of commands not readily placed into categories providing password
              crypting, general transformations, data compression, error correction and others.

              [1]    crypt

              [2]    md5crypt

              [3]    transform

              [4]    rs_ecc

              [5]    zip

              [6]    bz2

              [7]    unstack

SEE ALSO

       adler, ascii85, base64,  bz2,  crc,  crc-zlib,  crypt,  haval,  hex,  md2,  md5,  md5_otp,
       md5crypt,  oct,  otp_words,  quoted-printable,  ripemd-128, ripemd-160, rs_ecc, sha, sha1,
       sha1_otp, transform, uuencode, zip

KEYWORDS

       compression, encoding, error correction, message digest, transformation

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1996-2003, Andreas Kupries <andreas_kupries@users.sourceforge.net>