TR - Late in 2006 I decided to help the Tcl community to relaunch/improve/overhaul (or whatever you call it) the http://www.tcl.tk site. I was tired of all this marketing talk and nothing being done about it. So here I am, starting work slowly but continuously.
My original announcement for this task was posted in this thread about "Finding a niche for Tcl":
http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/98ec976d58b75c86/e7eb63b0b9993e81
On the site http://tcl.typoscriptics.de/portal you will always find the current status of the new Tcl portal. My plan is to ...
I am in phase 1 now collecting and reorganizing content from www.tcl.tk. Any time I see something interesting, I add a placeholder to the new site so I can remember what to add in phase 3.
(pages in parentheses are not yet transferred)
Yes you can. Provide content, stories, news, ...! I have already received some content (a tutorial) from Arjen Markus and an offer from the makers of the Tcl-URL! to help me trasnferring the weekly news to the site.
EKB Your new design is easier to navigate thatn www.tcl.tk. I look forward to seeing more. (Although I'm not crazy about the layout. It's too "Wordpress"-like for me, and I'm glad that at step 2 in your plan you're looking at designs. Maybe take a look at CSS Zen Garden for inspiration? [L2 ])
TR I know Zen Garden and many of these layouts are really beautiful. As the plan is, the focus is on content alone now. The current layout is a placeholder only, so people can see the content being added. When all content is there, I will switch focus to the layout and I think there will be lots to discuss then.
EKB Sounds like a good plan!
On another note, I think you could quickly fill in your Tcl/Tk placeholders for "hello, world":
puts "Hello, World!"
and
pack [label .l -text "Hello, World!"]
TR True. I was planning something like this. It needs a short introductory text, though. Maybe I'll take some from the wiki ... EKB Yes, in fact, there's a whole The Hello World program as implemented in Tcl/Tk page.
EKB One more comment. If you used the same type size on all the pages (home page & others), then the user could set the type size that's comfortable for them. My 2 1/2 cents.
TR This may be due to my ignorance on layout right now. I will look into this. Thanks for your comments! EKB No problem! Actually, truth be told, the last one was from my spouse, who is a graphic designer. She gave me permission to pretend it was my idea :-D
tjk You might add a link to the tkchat page to the the related links for Core Team. TR Done! Thanks for the hint.
chrisjl - Forgive me if this is already part of the plan, but I'd hate to see you complete this daunting task without me making this point. I hope part of the intended process is to change the URLs to reflect the page content. e.g. Documentation -> Tutorials is currently accessed as the highly forgettable page3/page10/page10.html - I'd much rather be able to tell people to visit www.tcl.tk/docs/tutorials (note the absence of an actual file name in that URL). TR I can assure you, this is part of the plan. The current page names are generated by the web software I am using and as long as I collect content and organize it, I will leave it like that. When all content is there, the names will be changed to something more reasonable :-)
LV 2007 Oct 25 The first thing I noticed was the typo in the <head> of the first page - it says Tck instead of Tcl ... TR: Whoops, how could that one stay for so long without being noticed ... corrected now, thanks!
AM (20 december 2007) In the beginning of this year I wrote two tutorials for this website. I think they are useful on the Wiki as well, so I add them verbatim (i.e. with explicit references to the Wiki, rather than page titles):
Fabricio Rocha - 10-Apr-2009 - Is this site prototype still available? I could not open it... I have some ideas for a Tcl/Tk site and I would like to contribute.
TR - Yes it is. See the link above under the heading 'The plan'. I just opened it and it works. I have, however, not had time lately to drive it further, but I am still trying :-) What would you like to contribute, then?
Fabricio Rocha - 10-Apr-2009 - Thanks, TR! I've written you an e-mail!
CMcC would just like to say that the prototype site is very pretty. Much more pretty than the incumbent site. Also more clearly laid out, with the menu on the right.
Fabricio Rocha - 11-Apr-2009 - Boiling ideas in my mind compelled me to create another prototype for a possible upgrade of www.tcl.tk. The address is http://tcltk.fabriciorocha.jor.br . It is based on the marvelous, free Joomla content management system (at http://www.joomla.org ). This makes very easy to change the whole site design with CSS templates; some of the registered users can insert content just like writing in a word processor; and there's a lot of free goodies which can be added to the website with some clicks (I have installed some of them, hope you like!)
I would like to know your opinions and suggestions. But please observe that I did this in one day, so it still misses a lot of content and functionality (user registration being the most evident one). I will try to add new features and texts soon, specially if you like the proposal. I had to adapt a template made for webhosting sites, and I don't know PHP and my graphic skills are *very limited* :). If somebody there knows Joomla and can write PHP and/or have design ability, feel welcome to help in creating an exclusive template. And if someone feels like wanting to help with the contents, please let me know it! :)
LV I'm not that crazy about the color scheme. But, IMO, it would be sad if it turned out that the primary web site for Tcl was changed from a Tcl based system to some other language.
Fabricio Rocha - I've already imagined this would be an issue, and it's true, because Joomla is PHP running on Apache and MySQL. But, as far as I know, there is no content management system built with or around Tcl (and a CMS is a must for dynamic sites with frequent updates and community contribution). And IMHO it's a matter of niches, or "each one doing what each one does best". PHP is great for websites for sure, there is little discussion on that; and by the other hand I'm certain that a lot of PHP developers and users are sure to have and/or want Tcl/Tk apps running in their desktops because PHP is not that strong in this field... About the color scheme, it can be changed for the whole site in two clicks, as long as there is a template (actually, this template being used has other six built-in colors available).
DKF: The worst problem with PHP is that it makes some practices (notably including code that is inherently vulnerable SQL injection attacks) rather easier to write than code that is resistant to such problems. Mind you, if we avoid phpBB then we'll at least be not quite so badly off (going by the evidence collected by my employer's web support team at any rate, which indicates that virtually all defacements, break-ins and email-abuse mischief trace back to that piece of software).
BTW, we really don't want to have a site that is open to defacement. We went through that phase a few years ago and it ended up with us just having to delete a large chunk of content. Never again.