Version 14 of Tcl/Tk/Talks

Updated 2009-04-08 08:07:56 by pa_mcclamrock

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! :)

RS 2009-04-08: Re "syntax is weird", see Why is TCL syntax so weird. In fact it's the most regular and systematic syntax (one might debate whether Tcl surpasses LISP here).

D. McC 2009 Apr 8: Easy to learn (for the most part); the most English-like programming language; not slow any more, even in terms of machine time, and often superb in terms of human time expended to get good results.

"GUIs look weird" isn't nearly as true as it used to be, but Tk/Ttk at its best still doesn't look as good--and isn't as easy to make look good--as GTK+ at its best. (At least, I think so, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.) A possible solution: gnocl now (in version 0.9.94) has attained a great deal of the functionality of Tk/Ttk, and combines the ease, versatility, and rapid results of Tcl scripting with the good looks and easy "themability" of GTK+. For those used to Tk, gnocl geometry management and widget commands take a bit of getting used to, but in some ways they're actually even easier than Tk.

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