(AMG: I'm starting this section for people who want to make a note of an idea but don't want to create a separate idea page until it starts to take shape.)

SEH: In previous years, feedback was received from students and others that the Tcl team's main GSoC ideas page was messy and lacked concision due to brainstorming discussions and brief idea notes on the page. Thus the decision was made to break out specific ideas and discussions to separate pages (hence the ideas table above). I'll suggest and add at a minimum a discussion button here to keep things from retrogressing too far, in anticipation of additional input/guidance.

Alpha Blending in the Canvas Widget

AMG: I'd like to be able to specify transparency for items in the canvas. One possibility is to let color names be augmented with an alpha value 0.0-1.0 (or 0-255, whatever). Another is to add a separate -alpha option. Each approach has pros and cons. Alpha-tagged color names permit separate levels of transparency for -outline and -fill (and -activefill and -disabledoutline and all the others) (or -background and -foreground in the case of [deprecated] bitmap items), but they don't mesh well with image and window items which take neither -outline nor -fill options. An -alpha option would cover all canvas items, but doesn't permit separate alpha for outline, fill, activeoutline, etc. Perhaps add alpha versions of all the existing color options, e.g. -outlinealpha, -activefillalpha, etc., but this means doubling the number of color-related options. Obviously this idea needs a bit more thought, though I write it here so it doesn't get lost.