announcing a new Tcl/Tk website
Bryan Oakley
everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
The website is geared mostly toward beginners and intermediate
programmers. The main page is in the style of the blog but I don't
consider it a blog per se. I won't have a lot of personal commentary or
opinions. Instead, I intend to present articles about the use of Tcl/Tk,
hopefully at least on a weekly basis.
If you have comments, suggestions for articles, or would like to
contribute by writing an article, I would enjoy hearing from you.
Thanks!
--
Bryan Oakley
http://www.tclscripting.com
Jeff Godfrey
"Bryan Oakley" <oak...@bardo.clearlight.com> wrote in message
news:_RjKf.59206$PL5....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and
> invite everyone to take a look. The address is
> http://www.tclscripting.com
Bryan,
While I haven't had time to go through the site in detail, what I've
seen so far looks *really* nice. Of course, I expected nothing less
from you... ;^) It looks like it has the makings to become a great
addition to the Tcl community - thanks!
On a side note, I really like the "look" of the site. Is it hand
authored, or are you using some kind of blogging or site-management
back-end?
Thanks,
Jeff
Bryan Oakley
> Bryan,
>
> While I haven't had time to go through the site in detail, what I've
> seen so far looks *really* nice. Of course, I expected nothing less
> from you... ;^) It looks like it has the makings to become a great
> addition to the Tcl community - thanks!
Thank you very much.
>
> On a side note, I really like the "look" of the site. Is it hand
> authored, or are you using some kind of blogging or site-management
> back-end?
I'm using a tool called RapidWeaver [1], which is a Mac-only tool. The
look is mostly a pre-designed template that came with RapidWeaver,
though I've made a few tweaks here and there. It was actually this tool
that inspired me to create the site. That, and the discussion this past
December in c.l.t about a Tcl magazine that generated a fair amount of
enthusiasm but no action.
I've been wanting to do a site like this for a couple years as a place
to hang some of my more in-depth usenet postings. I dreaded having to
spend a day or two creating the infrastructure, installing a web server,
etc. When I discovered RapidWeaver I had a complete working site with a
couple of articles in just a couple hours. Suddenly the barriers for
creating the site were gone and I had no more excuses.
1: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/index.php
Neil Madden
> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and invite
> everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
Excellent! I enjoyed (re-)reading through your "actions" article;
definitely a must read for all Tk developers, if they haven't seen it
before.
>
> The website is geared mostly toward beginners and intermediate
> programmers. The main page is in the style of the blog but I don't
> consider it a blog per se. I won't have a lot of personal commentary or
> opinions. Instead, I intend to present articles about the use of Tcl/Tk,
> hopefully at least on a weekly basis.
>
> If you have comments, suggestions for articles, or would like to
> contribute by writing an article, I would enjoy hearing from you.
I've bookmarked the RSS feed in Firefox/Sage. One comment: the RSS feed
entries all link to the front page summary of the article rather than
the full entry. As the summary is already contained in the RSS feed it
might be better to link to the full entry?
How do you see the site interacting with the wiki? The wiki has evolved
quite a broad scope, covering some introductory material, advanced
concepts, as well as discussions, speculation and flame wars. Is
tclscripting intended to be more for tutorial and established "design
patterns" type material?
Some succinct introductions/examples of use of individual popular
extensions (Tile, Snit, expect, http etc) would be something I'd find
useful. I might have some time soon to write one or two articles of this
sort.
-- Neil
Volker Hetzer
> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and invite
> everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
One nitpick though: Your feather is black. Is that intentional or does
Activestate not let you use the official logo?
(Please note, that this is the biggest problem I found, so everything else
is really nice :-) )
Lots of Greetings!
Volker
Eckhard Lehmann
> > If you have comments, suggestions for articles, or would like to
> > contribute by writing an article, I would enjoy hearing from you.
Thanks, Bryan! This seems to be a ressource that was lacking all the
time. I think it should be a little like oreilly's onlamp.com site - a
page where everyone can browse in a spare minute and read latest news
and interresting articles on Tcl/Tk development.
Did you consider to grant other, registered people the permission to
write articles - which are moderated by you maybe and go online? I
don't know whether it is easy or possible with the system you use. I
use wordpress for my private homepage, which gives me the ability to do
these kind of things... However, I still don't get my site truly
finished ;-).
Neil Madden wrote:
> I've bookmarked the RSS feed in Firefox/Sage. One comment: the RSS feed
> entries all link to the front page summary of the article rather than
> the full entry. As the summary is already contained in the RSS feed it
> might be better to link to the full entry?
That's what I get as well
> How do you see the site interacting with the wiki? The wiki has evolved
> quite a broad scope, covering some introductory material, advanced
> concepts, as well as discussions, speculation and flame wars. Is
> tclscripting intended to be more for tutorial and established "design
> patterns" type material?
As far as I see, it will be a complement to the wiki, explaining
actually interresting aspects more extended in a tutorial-style, and
linking to the relevant ressources in the wiki.. (?)
> Some succinct introductions/examples of use of individual popular
> extensions (Tile, Snit, expect, http etc) would be something I'd find
> useful.
Me too :)
Eckhard
Bryan Oakley
> I've bookmarked the RSS feed in Firefox/Sage. One comment: the RSS feed
> entries all link to the front page summary of the article rather than
> the full entry. As the summary is already contained in the RSS feed it
> might be better to link to the full entry?
Yeah, probably. I'm still learning the tool and haven't really played
with the RSS much.
>
> How do you see the site interacting with the wiki?
I see the wiki as a place for discussion. My site is a place for
articles about programming techniques. I'm purposefully leaving out the
ability for people to leave comments. I'm trying to present useful
information without a lot of noise.
> The wiki has evolved
> quite a broad scope, covering some introductory material, advanced
> concepts, as well as discussions, speculation and flame wars. Is
> tclscripting intended to be more for tutorial and established "design
> patterns" type material?
Yes.
>
> Some succinct introductions/examples of use of individual popular
> extensions (Tile, Snit, expect, http etc) would be something I'd find
> useful. I might have some time soon to write one or two articles of this
> sort.
Yes, eventually I want to have a sort-of "product review" section which
dissects various packages and shows what they do, how to use them, etc.
I would welcome your submissions, and thanks for the feedback.
Bryan Oakley
> Bryan Oakley schrieb:
>
>> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and
>> invite everyone to take a look. The address is
>> http://www.tclscripting.com
>
> Great site!
> One nitpick though: Your feather is black. Is that intentional or does
> Activestate not let you use the official logo?
Intentional. It's not the activestate logo, though I'll admit there's a
strong resemblence.
Bryan Oakley
> Did you consider to grant other, registered people the permission to
> write articles - which are moderated by you maybe and go online?
The way I'm doing the site I can't let others directly add pages. I will
be happy to include articles written by others though. Just send 'em to
me and I'll tidy it up if necessary and add it to the site.
Eckhard Lehmann
Eckhard
Donal K. Fellows
> Volker Hetzer wrote:
>> One nitpick though: Your feather is black. Is that intentional or does
>> Activestate not let you use the official logo?
> Intentional. It's not the activestate logo, though I'll admit there's a
> strong resemblence.
Tcl has its own logo (it's in both source and most binary distributions,
tclkit being the exception) though it's not in .ico format, being
designed more for use in printed material. Perhaps someone would like to
remedy this?
Donal.
Bryan Oakley
I wanted to use the blue feather but it didn't look very good in the
size that I wanted.
It would be nice for someone skilled with graphic design and development to
Bryan Oakley
Hmmm... I recall starting with that then rejecting it for some reason,
but now I don't recall the reason. I think maybe I didn't like the way
it scales -- it looks a bit jaggy when I make it the size I want. Or
maybe I couldn't find the feather image without the red background (odd,
since it took me about 5 seconds to find it by searching for "feather"
on my box).
As I look at it now it doesn't look bad, and the color fits my color
scheme. Maybe I'll tinker with the scaled image and see if I can reduce
the jaggies...
Earl Grieda
"Bryan Oakley" <oak...@bardo.clearlight.com> wrote in message
news:_RjKf.59206$PL5....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
Very nice. I enjoy reading programming tips and ideas. My only nitpick is
the title, Tcl Scripting. I would call it Tcl Programming. For whatever
reason, "script" comes with a negative connotation. To many non-technical
managers hear the word script and think of trivial "Hello world" shell
scripts. This bias makes it harder to convince people that Tcl is a real
language that accomplishes real tasks in an easier and more productive
manner. Think of it as marketing. Would you like sushi, or some cold dead
fish (an old HP joke).
Eckhard Lehmann
perfectly into the site design.
In general I think, the feather is a synonym for Tcl/Tk, no matter how
it looks exactly - as long as it doesn't look exactly as the Apache
feather.
Eckhard
Ulrich Schöbel
> In general I think, the feather is a synonym for Tcl/Tk, no matter how
> it looks exactly - as long as it doesn't look exactly as the Apache
> feather.
Did you see this one:
http://tcl.apache.org/logos/medium_logo.gif
I think it's a nice symbol for the synergetic effects of apache and Tcl
working hand in hand.
Best regards
Ulrich
lvi...@gmail.com
According to Neil Madden <n...@cs.nott.ac.uk>:
:How do you see the site interacting with the wiki? The wiki has evolved
:concepts, as well as discussions, speculation and flame wars. Is
:tclscripting intended to be more for tutorial and established "design
:patterns" type material?
Bryan I hope you won't mind if we drop pointers into the wiki
to the articles on your site. One of the things I notice is that your
site currently doesn't seem to provide a way for someone to comment
on your articles. If pointers are okay, then at least some discussion
on the articles is possible there.
--
<URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/ > Indescribable,uncontainable,all powerful,untameable
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.
<URL: mailto:lvi...@gmail.com > <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/ >
lvi...@gmail.com
According to Earl Grieda <eASQWER...@VADFWEFyahoo.comical>:
:
:"Bryan Oakley" <oak...@bardo.clearlight.com> wrote in message
:news:_RjKf.59206$PL5....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
:> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and invite
:> everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
:
:Very nice. I enjoy reading programming tips and ideas. My only nitpick is
:the title, Tcl Scripting. I would call it Tcl Programming.
I have to agree with Earl, at least on the negative connotations he goes
on to describe. And, if you ever expect to deal with the C API, you leave
the world of "scripting" in one sense anyways...
Bryan Oakley
> According to Neil Madden <n...@cs.nott.ac.uk>:
> :How do you see the site interacting with the wiki? The wiki has evolved
> :quite a broad scope, covering some introductory material, advanced
> :concepts, as well as discussions, speculation and flame wars. Is
> :tclscripting intended to be more for tutorial and established "design
> :patterns" type material?
>
> Bryan I hope you won't mind if we drop pointers into the wiki
> to the articles on your site. One of the things I notice is that your
> site currently doesn't seem to provide a way for someone to comment
> on your articles. If pointers are okay, then at least some discussion
> on the articles is possible there.
>
Pointers are fine. Right now I'm not guaranteeing that links to articles
will be permanent, but I'll do my best. A future version of the tool I'm
using will have full fledged "permalink" support (which it lacks now);
not sure how that will work with my naming scheme.
Comments are disallowed by design. Not that I think I should have the
final word, per se, but I don't want to have to deal with link spam and
I think the usability of the site suffers some with comments.
It will be an evolving site, though, as I learn more about what works,
what visitors want, etc.
Thanks for the comments.
Bryan Oakley
> According to Earl Grieda <eASQWER...@VADFWEFyahoo.comical>:
> :
> :"Bryan Oakley" <oak...@bardo.clearlight.com> wrote in message
> :news:_RjKf.59206$PL5....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> :> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and invite
> :> everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
> :
> :Very nice. I enjoy reading programming tips and ideas. My only nitpick is
> :the title, Tcl Scripting. I would call it Tcl Programming.
>
> I have to agree with Earl, at least on the negative connotations he goes
> on to describe. And, if you ever expect to deal with the C API, you leave
> the world of "scripting" in one sense anyways...
What can I say? tclscripting.com was available and seemed to be
reasonable choice at the time. I'm not sure what the status of tcltk.com
is... I see that "tclprogramming.com" is available; maybe I should have
put more thought into it. The goal was to create a site, and the fewer
hurdles I had to cross the better.
I guess it's not too late to switch, though I'm not yet convinced
"scripting" is so bad. The target audience is programmers rather than
managers, and programmers don't care (AFAIK).
I don't plan on dealing with the C API since I have virtually zero
experience in that area, though I would consider posting articles
written by others. The main goal was a place to put articles about
programming in Tcl/Tk.
Thanks for the feedback.
Jeff Hobbs
> Bryan Oakley schrieb:
>> I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and
>> invite everyone to take a look. The address is
>> http://www.tclscripting.com
> One nitpick though: Your feather is black. Is that intentional or does
> Activestate not let you use the official logo?
FWIW, ActiveState has no problem with others using the older
ActiveTcl feather logo. I can even provide artwork files for
those that want to repurpose it. The new ActiveTcl logo is
the frog, see top-right graphic on front page:
That one we are keeping under ActiveState control. You will
still see the feather in some ActiveTcl parts.
--
Jeff Hobbs, The Tcl Guy
http://www.ActiveState.com/, a division of Sophos
Volker Hetzer
> I guess it's not too late to switch, though I'm not yet convinced
> "scripting" is so bad. The target audience is programmers rather than
> managers, and programmers don't care (AFAIK).
just like VBScript, JScript, Perlscript and (unfortunately not) tclscript.
Lots of Greetings!
Volker
Volker Hetzer
> Bryan Oakley schrieb:
[...]
Still, bloody good idea to put up the site. Dont let yourself get drawn down by us.
Lots of Greetings!
Volker
Sacha Schär
I don't think "scripting" has that much of a negative connotation. For
me it means doing things quickly and on a high abstraction level. And
that is pretty much what tcl/tk does for me.
On the other hand, I associate "programming" with at least some
overhead, and critical design decision that have to be made before you
can even start.
IMHO, tcl/tk is most suitable for small projects, where you throw
together something nice within a few hours. For larger projects I prefer
C++, quite often in combination with tcl/tk for the flexible (aka
"scripting") parts.
-Sacha
Sacha Schär
for absolute newcomers. There is just to much information if you don't
know where to start.
On your site, OTOH, you can (so far) easily read everything in one go
(and be wiser afterwards).
-Sacha
Donald Arseneau
> FWIW, ActiveState has no problem with others using the older
> ActiveTcl feather logo. I can even provide artwork files for
> those that want to repurpose it. The new ActiveTcl logo is
> the frog,
In fact, I wondered if AS switched logos to free up the feather for
general Tcl use (as people already viewed it) while creating a new
logo that specifically referred to Activestate offerings.
--
Donald Arseneau as...@triumf.ca
Robert Hicks
I briefly considered it.
Robert
lvi...@gmail.com
According to Sacha Schär <sacha....@unibas.ch>:
:And yes, nice web site indeed! I think the wiki is no longer that useful
Are there plans for tclscripting.com to add articles for the "absolute
newcomer"? Right now, the articles I looked at seemed to range in
interest. In fact, that might be a useful addition - some sort of
tagging that indicates "this is an intro article" vs "this is an advanced
topic" vs "this is a pointer article" type thing. When the site has
a hundred or more articles (which of course we are all hoping for <smile>),
having them in sequential random order will make things a little tough
to locate.
Bryan Oakley
> According to Sacha Schär <sacha....@unibas.ch>:
> :And yes, nice web site indeed! I think the wiki is no longer that useful
> :for absolute newcomers. There is just to much information if you don't
> :know where to start.
> :
> :On your site, OTOH, you can (so far) easily read everything in one go
> :(and be wiser afterwards).
>
> Are there plans for tclscripting.com to add articles for the "absolute
> newcomer"?
Yes. My goal is to eventually have a tutorial section and at least
weekly installments. It's just a matter of finding the time to do it.
I'd do this full time if I didn't need a paycheck, and I know there's
absolutely no way for such a niche site to earn any income at all.
> Right now, the articles I looked at seemed to range in
> interest. In fact, that might be a useful addition - some sort of
> tagging that indicates "this is an intro article" vs "this is an advanced
> topic" vs "this is a pointer article" type thing. When the site has
> a hundred or more articles (which of course we are all hoping for <smile>),
> having them in sequential random order will make things a little tough
> to locate.
Eventually I'll have some sort of indexing scheme. Right now with just a
handful of articles it's hard to organize them into meaningful groups.
Thanks for the feedback!
Larry W. Virden
are great - each one teaches me useful new techniques. I was just
thinking about the day when, hopefully, the amount of good material was
so large that it became difficult to just read through them all.
suc...@wanadoo.fr
i went on tclscripting.com. Very interesting and very easy to
navigate. Congratulations and i hope this new site will long
live. My skills are unfortunately too insufficient to be of any
help in an editorial effort. The only thing i could do is to
translate, from time to time, an article into French if you ever
happen to need it.
anyway, i know it is a lot of personal work and again let me
congratulate you.
friendly
jerome
>I'd like to formally announce a website I've been working on and invite
>everyone to take a look. The address is http://www.tclscripting.com
>
>The website is geared mostly toward beginners and intermediate
>programmers. The main page is in the style of the blog but I don't
>consider it a blog per se. I won't have a lot of personal commentary or
>opinions. Instead, I intend to present articles about the use of Tcl/Tk,
>hopefully at least on a weekly basis.
>
>If you have comments, suggestions for articles, or would like to
>contribute by writing an article, I would enjoy hearing from you.
>
>Thanks!
Bryan Oakley
at least one article a week for a few years. Not sure if I have that
many articles in me but I'm gonna give it my best shot.
Thanks for offering to translate into french for me. That's an
intriguing idea and I'll give it some thought.
Erik Leunissen
>
> FWIW, ActiveState has no problem with others using the older
> ActiveTcl feather logo. I can even provide artwork files for
> those that want to repurpose it.
>
The ActiveTcl feather logo appeals to me far more than the older feather
logo. If accessible, I would like to use it in documentation of Tcl
software.
Would it possible to provide access to the logo and artwork, for example
at the Tcl Developer Xchange website (or any other appropriate public
place)?
Greetings,
Erik Leunissen
--
leunissen@ nl | Merge the left part of these two lines into one,
e. hccnet. | respecting a character's position in a line.
Jeff Hobbs
> Jeff Hobbs wrote:
>> FWIW, ActiveState has no problem with others using the older
>> ActiveTcl feather logo. I can even provide artwork files for
>> those that want to repurpose it.
>>
>
> The ActiveTcl feather logo appeals to me far more than the older feather
> logo. If accessible, I would like to use it in documentation of Tcl
> software.
>
> Would it possible to provide access to the logo and artwork, for example
> at the Tcl Developer Xchange website (or any other appropriate public
> place)?
Please send an email to me with the preferred formats. I do
have Adobe Illustrator source artwork, but can probably generate
a few other formats.