Over the past year or so I have been thinking about what it would take to make a mostly pure Tcl/Tk Office type system. To me it makes sense to have one, due to Tcl being portable on so many fronts. It would be nice to have a full Tickle package where all applications can talk to, embed and link to each other.
This wiki item is just an idea generator and thought process recorder.
Here is what I see in a full office type system, and possible code candidates/donators. Please add your ideas and comments below.
Note – The GUI should use Tile as much as possible.
GJL How would this be a functionally better/different office suite from OpenOffice.org, which is free and crossplatform? I think there is an opportunity to create a desktop application suite that is tightly integrated with the current SaaS offerings, eg, Google Apps, Zoho, Zimbra, etc. that would give desktop function and offline ability with online collaboration tools. Would you create this with Tcl/Tk from the ground up or jump on board OO.org? It would be a big task to write the software and even bigger task get users and support them. Tcl/Tk/Tile could certainly do with a killer app (if popularity counts for anything...)
Scott Beasley No OO.org at all. A TCL Office system would be more maintainable, integrator friendly and run on more of the older systems. I have had many heartaches with OO on older hardware due to OS requirements etc (Macs especially). ZB Perhaps meanwhile can you try Siag? [L7 ] Scott Beasley Siag was my WP of choice for many years, but I think the benefits of a Tcl only office package would be legion.
LES Look at the crowd you're talking to. Of course we would like to see that happen. Heck, I wish my entire OS and all the apps I ever use were pure Tcl. But who is going to make those things? An office suite? That is an insane amount of (unpaid) work. The OOo code is more than 10 years old and still under development. The Tcl community is too small to undertake something like that. We don't even have a decent pure-Tcl/Tk browser. That would be too much work too. First things first: get resources to help Georgios Petasis with his TileQt [L8 ] and TileGTK [L9 ] projects. No Tcl/Tk app will get really popular on the Nix platforms until they achieve true native look.
Martyn Smith On top of that without native printing an office suite has almost no use at all. This and the look and feel are much more important.
ZB Gnocl is the answer? So TCL/Gnocl rather than TCL/Tk?
LES Gnocl requires Gnome so I hate it already.
WJG mmm,.. I wouldn't be so hasty in making rash decisions. Gnocl, like the GNOME desktop uses Gtk+. There are Gnocl branches that run on MSWindows and MacOS.
See: hypertools