Please just throw ideas here and keep verbose comments for TCL Marketing discussion. Thanks!
- unperson IMHO 3 individuals with 3 excellent TK/TCL apps are giving TCL/TK a great name outside TCL/TK circles: Will Duquette with Notebook, Brian Theado with TKoutline and Mark Roseman with Project Forum. When I realized that these 3 apps were coded in TCL/TK and that they all could hold in one exe, I was interested in the language. So blame Duquette, Theado and Roseman for having attracted me here! :-) Now with how many scripting languages are we able to code apps that hold in one exe, with no dlls and to boot: the app is portable to all OSs. This possibility to produce exes easily and the great TCL Kit system to execute tcl files are TCL/TK's great strengths. The more good apps will be programmed in TCL/TK (commercial or not) the more they will be known and the more programmers will be attracted to TCL/TK. Making tclkit known to the programmers is also a step in the right direction...
- unperson (...) So think of us poor laymen, unprogramming dummies and please produce exes we can download and run like Will, Brian and Mark have done. There is a lot of great stuff here I want to try but I see all these technical terms "package this required", "package that required" and it just turns me off. EXES Por favor! Des EXES pour l'amour de Dieu!
- RLH - It would be nice if Tcl had something akin to either Zope, Rails, or Template Toolkit. Something that makes it really nice to use Tcl for web stuff. WJR - It does actually: it's a combination of TclHttpd or Rivet, and the HTML/ncgi packages. These tools make for a very flexible web templating system. I'm not sure what this has to do with Tcl Marketing though. RLH - I guess at the time I was thinking this would be an aspect of Tcl TO market? Better place to put it? WJR - Ah, I understand. I for one find myself wishing more people knew about Tclhttpd, Rivet, and other Tcl-based tools. RLH - I know about Rivet and that is what I would use if I had more of a tutorial to go by. Unfortunately the world is either an IIS one or an Apache one (pretty much). :-\
- SEH - Establish a Tcl advocacy foundation whose mission is evangelism of Tcl/Tk, and aid and support (but not control) of the Tcl Core Team. This foundation should:
- Assemble an advisory board consisting of representatives from the heaviest hitters among users of Tcl; that is Cisco, Motorola, BitKeeper, TiVo, AOL, etc. Ask the board members for advice on what's holding Tcl back and what they'd like to see added.
- Raise money using grants and donations, and establish bounties and rewards for contributions of desired code and bug fixes.
- Coordinate presentation of papers and talks at conventions and conferences, and try to ensure that no major one goes by without at least one paper showcasing an advance in the Tcl world.
- Establish a Foundation code repository that complements Tcllib, that accepts GPL code et al. Dust off and buff up the greatest hits of the past in terms of GUI applications, and feature the latest infrastructure and basic algorithm code that have been sprouting up lately. Set up and run a Cantcl server for easy one-stop access to the best Tcl code.
- Collect and extend Tcl tutorial and teaching materials. Propose Tcl as an ideal first programming environment for kids and beginners, which bridges naturally to more advanced topics such as C and OOP. Get 'em young.
- Make frequent press releases and propose stories and coverage to relevant magazines, columnists, blogs, etc.
- Encourage Tcl enthusiasts to eat their own dogfood. Collect answers to the question: if you use a non-Tcl application for which there is a Tcl equivalent, why don't you switch? (I'll give you a topic: why did most presenters at the last Tcl convention use Powerpoint to author their presentations?)
- Articulate a mission: total domination of the scripting world.