Q: For discussion why external development for TCL so behind.
Keith Swallow
This by the way is to not generate a flame war. I honestly want to hear
some other opinions.
This is kind of a general question that always seems to bother me and is
actually forcing me to learn perl. It seems that most of the side
development or extension development to TCL is non existent.
Besides the few major ones like expect and BLT there seems to be little
or no growth. Most of the extensions , the web plugin, hell even things
like specTCL are a year or 2 old and it seems that development on them is
dead. This is what botheres me because I am looking to TCL as a mechanism
for a large amount of the software dev I am doing and I would hate to have
my language of choice die off because know one is doing anything with it.
I mean you read the posts in here and people are always asking for things
like perlgtk and so on, yet there exists nothing like this for TCL. Why
people develop for perl and not for tcl? Questions like this. I still love
tcl, I just wonder why it seems to be dying.
I was just wondering what others think on the whole matter.
Thanks,
Keith
Bryan Oakley
My guess is that more people are using tcl to solve real world problems,
often for some vertical application. It is less of a "hackers" language
than perl. Usage of tcl is far from slowing down, it's just that usage
seems to be less visible than perl.
If you were to consider each application that embeds tcl, and thus
extends tcl with it's own application specific commands, you'd see the
scales tip much more toward tcl's side, I would guess. So perhaps there
is significantly *more* work done extending tcl, but that work is more
vertical and less general purpose.
--
Bryan Oakley mailto:oak...@channelpoint.com
ChannelPoint, Inc. http://purl.oclc.org/net/oakley
Education is full of oversimplified lies which can be
refined into the truth later.
Harald Kirsch
> Besides the few major ones like expect and BLT there seems to be little
> or no growth. Most of the extensions , the web plugin, hell even things
> like specTCL are a year or 2 old and it seems that development on them is
> dead. This is what botheres me because I am looking to TCL as a mechanism
> for a large amount of the software dev I am doing and I would hate to have
> my language of choice die off because know one is doing anything with it.
Several reasons why this is the case have already been discussed
recently in other threads (`extending the core' or similar), however
afaik the following was not yet mentioned:
Some things are just too easy in Tcl. The typical situation is that
when I am missing something I feel would require a decent extension, I
have hacked a workable solution in about no time. Of course the
solution is not a general one as would be required for an extension,
but it works just right for the specific task it was written for.
Harald Kirsch
--
---------------------+------------------+--------------------------
Harald Kirsch (@home)| | Now I rebooted.
k...@iitb.fhg.de | | --- Jerry Pournelle, BYTE
gegen Punktfilitis hilft nur `chmod u-w ~'
lvi...@cas.org
:Keith Swallow wrote:
:> Besides the few major ones like expect and BLT there seems to be little
:> or no growth. Most of the extensions , the web plugin, hell even things
Keith, in the past 6 months or so I have processed approx. 800 new or updated
application or extension references relating to Tcl or Tk. I know that I
didn't get to another 300+ that I would like to have examined due to lack
of time/energy/enthusiasm... Here is a rough list. Now, perhaps 10% or
more of these are not applicable. That still puts us around 500+
applications and extensions. Not bad.
CDlib omnet tk-tiff.an0
C_ImTcl onlinechat tk.geometry.discussion
Dali.overview opengl.eastern tk3play
Fellows.archive openglwidget tk805dash
FmtEntry opentrack tkDict
Java optcl tkMOO-light
MessageBox optcl.an0 tkWorld
Petris option-tutorial tk_brief
PySol option.tutorial tkanim
Snake oratcl.bib tkantvir
TBase organizer tkapache
TclFont oss.excost tkarchive
Tk_Multi pack2grid tkauth
abacus.an1 packlet tkcd
absoft padd++ tkchooser2
acs padgraph tkcvs.win
activetcl parallel tkdesk.an0
advlinux pedit tkdict
agni percy tkdirdiff
aix.bin perf.tcl tkfileman
alt.dde perlplusplugin tkfirewall
altptk perltk.book.an0 tkfpw
altptkman perltk.plugin tkgetdir
amapi pftp tkgetdir.an0
amazinganagram pgaccess.an0 tkgs.an0
angela.an0 pgaccess.ml tkhinote
aol.interbase pitcl tkinfo.an0
aolserver pixmaped tklogger
aolserver.oracle plus.patch.tcl810 tkmail
assertions.tcl plus.tk811 tkman
axtcl pod2texinfo tkmasqdialer
babel pool tkme
bbbike pow.an0 tkmpeg
bed pppconnect tkmsgbox
bgi.activetcl prettyp tkmsmail.an0
biglook progress.an0 tkmsmail.an1
bitgen progressbar tknanoproxy
bitkeeper.an0 protype tkpaint.an1
blindgalaxy prox tkpiechart
blitz ptk.an1 tkreq
blitztcl ptk.ex tkspline0.2
blt2.4h ptk.examples tksql
blt24g.dll ptk.gnuplot tkstep.addon
blt24i ptk.mod tkstep.an0
bltmac ptk.ntacct tkstep8
bras.an1 ptk.objscanner tktag
bras.an2 ptk.patches tktetris
bras.an3 ptk.pgms tktiff
btree.db ptk.summerfield tktrans
bwidget80381 ptk.tkmulti tkview.an2
c-forge.1.2 ptk.treegraph tkweather
c_imtcl ptk.url tkwm
c_imtcl.an0 ptkdb.an0 tkx11.an0
canvas.clip ptkdb.ml tkxanim
catdoc ptkei tkxanim.10alpha
cbb ptkfinger togl.an0
ccvs ptknslookup tomahawk
cddbp-proxy.1.2 ptktime torb
cdr-toaster.0.95 ptkview tree
changes.tcl pynche treeNobj
chaps python-url treepi
chezscheme python.an0 ts
cid python.tkinter ttdp
classytcl pythonswig tuba.an0
clig pythonswig.an0 tutors
clig2 pytix tuxedo.tcl
codemagic quadronegro tydoc.03
codemagic.beta quicktimetcl ucb-snmp
colorslide recode.tk unicode.fonts
colourchooser remind unicode.fonts.cyberbit
comm.cadence rexx-tk uparrow
comm.teamwave.4.1 robodoc.an0 usenix
compound rpmmgr vcron
compoundimage runlevel.app velocigen
cpptcl scotty vignette
cpupie scp-wrapper vjava
crossfire scriptics.an0 vmusic
crypt scriptics.pr voicecall
csh scripting.pointers vtcl.faq
csv scroll vtk.an2
curry setlist vtk.an3
cygwin.tcl.an0 setopts vtk.www
dali shape vu.alpha
dash.tk811 shape0.3 vw.tcl
dbMan siagoffice vxtcl8.0
dc20 simpat warp
dc20.an0 simpleopt wcb.an0
dde2.0 slidewidget.an1 webpagecnt
ddeml sma websmacker
dejitter smalltickle websmacker.an0
detectors snack webtcl
dolphin snack-v1.5p2 widgetcallbacks
dotfile snmpmonitor wiki
dx.tcl snow wikit
eardrum snowstar win32.itcl301
edit soar.an0 windows.setup
egr.maf sockspy wishcon.an0
egr.tiger solitaire x-files.an0
electric soundstudio x-seti.0.7.2
elf sqltcl-ric xSITE
enscriptconfig sreecad xcd-fnord
epage ssltcl xircon
erlang statsview.an0 xircon.color
etags.emacs20.2 stk xml
examples stsrcs xpa
excost.an0 stubs.info xsite
explain swig.an1 xsplit
extral swig.java xvidmode
faq.tutorials sybase.ptk xwizard
fastmap sybtcl zipper
feather tDOM autodoc
ferrups tSMTPmail battlechat
filerunner.an0 tac burt
flynt taskmanager combobox
fontdlg tbase cvw
fontmanager tcl-faq.chow.1 freewrap
fontsel tcl-faq.chow.2 ftp_lib
freewrap.an1 tcl-faq.fix fve
fstool tcl-faq.kare.1 grail
fuzz.activex tcl-faq.tut ktk
fuzzy.tcl tcl-gdbi metakit
gdi tcl-guide mktclapp
gdtclft.an1 tcl-info mmucl
getopts.vitus tcl-rpc mops
ghost tcl-ru obfusc
gp tcl-setup openldap
gpib tcl.dde.enhance piTcl
grass tcl.fontlock ppl-plug
greyboard tcl8.vms ptax98
gs550 tcl804.plus pysol
gv1.4 tcl805 stubpatch
hotmole tcl806 stubs
howto.an0 tcl81 swish
ibm.icons.an0 tcl811 tcLex
idle tcl811.i18n tcl
img tcl811.tclpro tclblend
img12-update tclblend.linux tclcontrol
incant tclblend1.1 tclpro
innosetup tclbook tclreadline
inout tclctrl tclxml
interp tcldash.811 tcom
introspection tcldb tkabout
ircchat tcldev.an0 tkchooser
itcl301win tclets.sound tklosung
jacl-tclblend tclexcept.an0 tkmame
keirc tclfont tkmoo-light
koi8-r tclgdbm0.5 tknotepad
ksniff tclget.an0 tksmb
lane tclhtml tksmtp
linkvar tclish.src tktable
linuxjournal tcljava.an1 tkwinesetup
lithium tclldap tkx10
lpshell tclmico.an0 tuba
lua-linux tclocx.an1 ucd-snmp
mac.absoft.sample.tcl tclodbc.mac weather
mac.serial tclpasswd workplace
macosx.tcl tclperformance wrap
macspeech tclplus.811 xbit
mactcl.extension tclpresents xxl
majorminor tclpresents.an0 aegis
mam tclprint.an0 cdr-toaster
man.dos tclr dde
mapfree.scripts tcltk eggdrop
mash.an0 tcltk.81b3 poscunits
matchxplorert tcltk.clock postgresql
mathwizards.tcl tcltk.pgm postilion
mathxplorer-t tcltk805.mac python
mci tcltk81.mod.gnuwin quick-tk
mcwidget tcltk81b2 rscript
mdpw tcltkjournal syncal
meta-gui tcltkprogref tclex
misc tcludp timidity
misc.an0 tclwddx tkcon
misc.tcl.an0 tclwin tkrunit
mklinkwin tclx804.help tkwho
mkpkg tclxmldoc vtclava
mkpkg2 tdd zircon
mktclapp.an1 tea bwidget
mocalc tecate dbman
mod_dtcl.an0 tempcon setops
mod_dtcl.an1 testchanne tk_Brief
modemtcl tet tkdiff
modicon.plc tet3 trfcrypt
mozart tg wcb
mp3.app tide august
ms_shell_setup tide-light c-forge
msgedit tik-addons launcher
mtree tik-eardrum mclistbox
myrmecox tik.cnn memchan
myrtk tik.cnn.an0 tkseti
mysql.hcl tik.gel tkzip
netreality tik.minimalist x-seti
new.entryfield tik.technews mod_dtcl
nextorf tik.weather quirc
noniget time tcldev
notebook.tk tintoys tkworld
nt-tcl.an0 tix siag
ntserves.unix tix.an0 trf
objectcmd tix.vc++ moodss
objective-tcl tix4107x2 tik
odie tk-contexthelp.an0
:> like specTCL are a year or 2 old and it seems that development on them is
This is a kind of application winnowing. Applications which either show
no commercial application, or whose authors have had their focus redirected,
are abandoned. This is, frankly, one of the more unusual aspects of the
Tcl community. There seems to be very little interactions on most of the
mailing lists to which I subscribe and even when someone steps forward to
take on a project, it continues to flounder as frequently as it does
blossom. I would love to find a sociological explanation for it.
:> I mean you read the posts in here and people are always asking for things
:> like perlgtk and so on, yet there exists nothing like this for TCL. Why
Surely people asking for perlgtk will pop over to comp.lang.perl.misc and
get it, won't they? It's the ones asking for tcl/gtk that worry me. But
then, gtk apparently comes across as more flash than substance. Perhaps
rather than trying to force the issue with gtk, a more constructive
activity might be to identify what aspects of gtk are attractive and see
how we might add them to tk?
--
<URL: mailto:lvi...@cas.org> Quote: Saving the world before bedtime.
<*> O- <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/>
Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.