This is a page for me to outline a 45 minute talk I am giving this summer on Tcl/Tk

** Talk Overview **

   * 45 minutes total

   * Sophisticated audience

   * Unix users

   * Skeptical about Tcl/Tk

** Things does great **

   * GUI

   * Event loop (file + GUI)

   * Deferred evaluation

   * Portability, especially across unices

   * Template with subst

** Complaints -- some fair, some no longer accurate ** 

   * Syntax is weird: non-Algol

   * Slow

   * Syntax is weird: names/ values versus variables

   * GUI's look weird because of motif commitment -- not true anymore

   * Visual programming tools.

** Demos ** 

   * Hello World button, counting buttons

   * fifo/ barcode event scanner thing

   * tksed

   * postgresql over ssh

** Possible new niches **

   * Now there are lots more Unix machines around and they need a visual scripting language

   * Makers should be driving their things with Tcl/Tk

   * I think Tcl should be developed into a templating language for apache

   * Education?

   * C programming -- a way to get into C with the easy payoff of scripting.

** Challenges **

   * Deployment 
   ** ''how is deployment a challenge? Of all the languages on the planet, Tcl is about the only one that has this one nailed because of tclkits, starkits and starpacks.''
   *** Recently it is not shipping on standard installations, like Free Geek's Ubuntu.
   *** Also, I think the starkits whatever is a little confused still 

   * Libraries (the community needs a Tcl/Tk library project)

** Skeleton/ recipe for moderately complex (200 line) visual script
   * MODEL array
   * upvar proc's as callbacks
   * traces to update widgets
   * fileevents
   * vwait
   * overall code layout -- commenting style, code sections, etc.


** Funny Slides and Images **

   * I am not a funny presenter, except by mistake.

** Notes for using this later **

   * All user groups need speakers -- hint, hint

   * Feel free to update, use, comment on successes and failures, etc

** Links **

http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2009/proposals/24 

http://tcl.projectforum.com/roadmap/Home 

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/d6f... 

----
[Fabricio Rocha] ''08-Apr-09'' - Hello, Webb. As you said you would like to have some comments from the community, I would like to suggest you some things. In the "complaints" section, I think that the lack of visual programming tools is a candidate -- even though lots of people think that Tcl/Tk is so simple that it would not need it, those tools are usually expected nowadays (I am actually getting my hands dirty with that, but it's a long way to go). Also, if the "complaints" section is something like myths-to-destroy, maybe you could mention the Tk's Motif trauma which is still so-much spread, and present Ttk as the current answer. And in the "things done great" section it would possibly be good to mention the above-average portability Tcl/Tk provides.

By the way, "granpa might be old, but he can still kick your ass" was great! :)

----
!!!!!!
%| enter categories here |%
!!!!!!