Application User's Wishlist for Tcl

Purpose: identify features missing from Tcl (or Tk) needed, or at least desired, by users of applications. This would not be features missing from a particular application - but features missing from Tcl that, if present, would make the user's use of applications easier, more enjoyable, etc.

An urgent need is one which an application writer could not today meet without developing major new functionality that, when examined, is likely to be a commonly used feature. Urgent does NOT necessarily mean that everyone is going to agree that the feature is needed; just that users consider the feature necessary or important ;-) .

Urgent needs

Cooperative use of user's skin/theme selections on the desktop, with unique skin/theme specification possible
[KBK 30 January 2000] Printing from a Tcl/Tk app.

Useful needs

Drag and Drop - developer could meet this need by making use of tkdnd (except that doesn't work on MacOS X).

DKF - strange... I would have reversed the priorities of skins and D&D... Ho hum.

? - As a user, or as a developer? On comp.lang.tcl I have seen few users who asked for drag and drop - but often see requests about skins.

DKF - But application authors can already do that sort of thing by reading resources correctly and maybe also recoding some widgets in terms of the canvas widget. Sure, it's a lot of work for app authors, but it is possible (unlike D&D which is severely restricted.) As I was saying, MMOVFY...

Vince - I agree that D&D is urgent. Not necessarily every bell and whistle of dnd, but the basic ability to drop a bit of text into a window, drag a url into an entry, etc.

GPS - BLT provides an easy method for having themes. This part of BLT should be merged with the standard Tk distribution.

This code:

  set file1 ../demos/images/chalk.gif
  set file2 ../demos/images/tan_paper.gif
  image create photo texture1 -file $file1
  image create photo texture2 -file $file2
  option add *Frame.Tile texture1
  option add *Toplevel.Tile texture1
  option add *Label.Tile texture1
  option add *Scrollbar.tile texture1
  option add *Button.tile texture1

Creates this appearance:

DKF - Now that is cool...

GPS: My new (since I wrote about BLT's feature) Tk_Theme package provides theme support for systems with X.

What would it take to do keyboard and mouse emulation?

Category Suggestions