[Jeffrey Hobbs] wrote in [the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup] on 2002-02-15:

So how can people help out?  Well, I have many partly formed ideas
that I would be glad to pass on to interested parties.  It would be
nice if those in academia could interest a student or three
to work on interesting projects in the core.  I guarantee you I can
find projects of interesting enough research value for their time.

Do you like compilers, GUI, IO, algorithms,
automata theory, OS internals, or ???  I guarantee you, you name
me a preference, and I'll return at least 3 projects or merit.
Let me just give some morsels:

Compiler: (a specialty of msofer at the moment)
	* Simple post-pass optimization (making things like ''if 0'' completely disappear)
	* Byte-compiling of more commands (switch, l*, ...) - Jazz it up by better reusing code between eval'ed and bc'ed variants (this isn't so great now)
	* Reorganization of TclExecuteByteCode for enhanced performance (this really will require thinking)

GUI: oh, this list would go on forever
	* themeing
	* enhanced native platform capability
	* work on TkGS
	* more widgets
	* a truly efficient megawidget system
	* improve embedding / embedability
	* ...

IO:
	* design / write cool VFS extensions
	* special path optimizations for simple IO cases
	* core UDP support (that means fileevent and all that works too)

algorithms: this is basically looking at whatever algs Tcl uses, and seeing what might get improved
	* hash table performance
	* UTF <> Unicode handling
	* ...

automata theory:
	* this would be the regexp engine (maniacal laugh)

OS internals:
	* loading DLLs from memory
	* core DLL function caller (x-platform)
	* threading tweaks
	* improved allocators

I could get into fine detail on any of the points.  Look at all
those fun projects!  What I would give to be a student again.
Find a couple bored friends.  Have a semester long hack fest.

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[Arts and crafts of Tcl-Tk programming]