May 2023 Tcl Meetup notes

Tcl meetup 2023-05-09

Meeting notes

(as held on 2023-05-16)

• nat-418 described his work on packaging Tcl and extensions for the Nix package manager sample package
• nat-418 also talked about the possibility of a Tcl LSP implementation and referenced the treesitter Tcl plugin for syntax highlighting in editors.
• On a related note, aku linked to the specification language used by tclchecker for parsing Tcl.
• There was a discussion and consensus (at some level) that the items on the critical path to get 9.0 alpha/beta out the door are closure on TIP 657/667, TIP 661/664 and TIP 653. Also the need to farm out release tasks to contributors to reduce the load on the release manager.
• aku agreed to set up a tcl9 branch on the tcllib repository so people can start porting code to tcl9.
• bch brought up the need for an unsigned typedef equivalent to Tcl_Size. It was felt this could be added later without compatibility issues.

Deferred topics

Following topics were deferred as main proponents were not present.

• (AM) In February the possibility of moving the SDL+AGG branch into the trunk was discussed. What is the status?
• (AM) And: numtcl, scitcl, definitely intriguing :)

• (AM) Yet another one: the webpage on tin - something to support?
• (NR) Tcl 9 will be able to call C functions in DLL or shared libraries?
• (NR) Tcl 9 will have a package manager?
• (NR) Tcl 9 will be able to add types on variables? Below an example from TypeScript lang

let age: number = 37; 

Would it have an impact on the performance (mathematical computation by example) of the program if certain variables in Tcl 9 were typed ? Or nothing Tcl 9 will never be a typed language, it was not designed like that.

• (NR) Tcl 9 will be able to parse argument like this package does ?
• (NR) Tk x.x with Tcl 9 will be able to add a OpenGl frame ?
• WIP (PYK): Putting arithSeries behind Tcl_Obj interface.
• whatever else floats your boat!

NR - 2023-05-03 16:27:10

Can we ask you all kinds of questions about the development of Tcl 9 ? Or not at all, is this not the time or the right place ?

stevel - 2023-05-04 00:26:39

You most certainly can, there's no fixed agenda. If any questions that can't be answered in the call document them here.

ABU 2023-05-05

About SDL+AGG: Sorry I didn't follow the discussion, but anyway, have you ever considered Blend2d as an alternative to AGG ? I think its performances are far superior, see https://blend2d.com/performance.html . Blend2d has a nice C/C++ API and I also integrated it in Tcl. See the wiki pages Blend2d and Blend2d Gallery.

arjen - 2023-05-05 13:46:19

I am pretty sure I did, but when I checked the notes from the past meetings, I came across this subjec. As I am generally interested in graphics, I added it to the list of subjects.

dkf - 2023-05-09 19:24:57

Well that was a poor experience! Both audio and video kept dropping. (I couldn't speak also, but that wasn't the app's fault.)

stevel - 2023-05-10 03:20:29

It turns out there were technical issues with Jitsi that affected the call so we will need to reschedule.

Jitsi support responded promptly and it appears the problems were resolved (see https://community.jitsi.org/t/jitsi-meet-issues-each-participant-could-see-hear-a-random-number-of-attendees/123435/3 ).

Would it suit if we rescheduled for next Tuesday the 16th at the same time?