ANNOUNCE: Tcl/Tk 8.6a1 RELEASED
Donald G Porter
Tcl/Tk 8.6a1 Release Announcement
June 25, 2008
The Tcl Core Team is pleased to announce the 8.6a1 releases of the Tcl
dynamic language and the Tk toolkit. This is the first alpha release
of Tcl/Tk 8.6. More details can be found below. We would like to
express our gratitude to all those who submit bug reports and patches.
This information is invaluable in enabling us to identify and eliminate
problems in the core.
Where to get the new releases:
------------------------------
Tcl/Tk 8.6a1 sources are freely available as open source from the
Tcl Developer Xchange web site at:
http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.6.html
This web page also contains additional information about the releases,
including new features and notes about installing and compiling the
releases. Sources are always available from the Tcl SourceForge
project's file distribution area:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10894
Binaries for most major platforms are available from:
http://www.activestate.com/Tcl
For additional information:
---------------------------
Please visit the Tcl Developer Xchange web site:
This site contains a variety of information about Tcl/Tk in general, the
core Tcl and Tk distributions, Tcl development tools, and much more.
Summary of Changes since Tcl/Tk 8.5:
--------------------------------------
The following were the main changes in Tcl/Tk 8.6a1. A complete list
can be found in the changes file at the root of the source tree. The
more complete ChangeLog is also included with each source release.
This release is the first alpha release of 8.6. The alpha moniker means
that it is in feature addition mode. All bug fixes (and some more) up
to and including 8.5.3 changes are included in 8.6a1. The following
list focuses on new features added so far in 8.6. This release is a
development release, and should only be considered for deployment use
after considerable testing.
* [TIP 257] New commands [oo::object], [oo::class], etc. support object
oriented programming.
* [TIP 230] New commands [chan push] and [chan pop] provide script-level
access to the stacked channels mechanism.
* [TIP 285] New routines Tcl_CancelEval() and Tcl_Canceled() to
allow interruption of script evaluation in an interp by the embedding
application.
* [TIP 317] New commands [binary encode] and [binary decode].
* [binary] is now a [namespace ensemble].
* [uplevel $l $script] now bytecompiles $script.
* C code compiled with USE_TCL_STUBS now must be linked against a
stub library. The Tcl shared library no longer exports variables
used in the stub interface. Analogous changes also made to Tk.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* New visual-styles element engine for Tk on Windows.
* Writing GIF images now uses real LZW compression.
--
Tcl Core Team and Maintainers
Don Porter, Tcl Core Release Manager
--
| Don Porter Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division |
| donald...@nist.gov Information Technology Laboratory |
| http://math.nist.gov/~DPorter/ NIST |
|______________________________________________________________________|
jal...@gmail.com
I wanted to thank you and all of the developers who continue to work
on Tcl. As a new Tcl user, it surprised me to see how many
programmers feel that Tcl is past the end of its life. News like this
really makes me feel better about continuing to invest effort in
learning Tcl(which is by far the most fun language I've ever
programmed in). Keep up the awesome work!
Sincerely,
Joshua Litt
USCode
Well said. Other new languages, technology fads and companies come and
go but good ol'Tcl/Tk is still there, moving forward, not following the
latest trends but only those ideas that really pass the ROI and
productivity muster.
Googie
> * [TIP 257] New commands [oo::object], [oo::class], etc. support
> object
> oriented programming.
I can't find it in TIP description - is the new OO support going to be
somehow connected with Tk object system?
Will it be easy to build megawidgets basing on standard Tk/Ttk widgets
using new OO extension and make these megawidgets act/be used like
regular Tk/Ttk widgets?
(should I call it "extension"?)
--
Pozdrawiam (Regards)!
Googie
Donal K. Fellows
> I can't find it in TIP description - is the new OO support going to be
> somehow connected with Tk object system?
It's not in the TIP because I decided that the TIP was large enough
and complicated enough as it is. It's better to do things in stages
and get each bit right. I suspect that there will be some megawidget
support code added later on, as that will make doing a widget easier
than it is now; the story isn't finished yet.
> Will it be easy to build megawidgets basing on standard Tk/Ttk widgets
> using new OO extension and make these megawidgets act/be used like
> regular Tk/Ttk widgets?
This is unofficial, but see http://wiki.tcl.tk/21103 and skip to about
half way down the page (search for 'widget createSubclass') and see
what I've done already. That's just pure TclOO and Tk and Ttk, plus a
scripted bit of megawidget hackery (the top half of the page). If we
can do megawidgets in pure scripting without much effort, do they need
to be in Tk? :-)
Donal.