Version 30 of Tcl 8.6 Wish List

Tcl 8.6 Wish List

This list is much more concrete than the Tcl 9.0 WishList, the wishes being more that someone should undertake the listed tasks than that someone should figure out how to do X.

Expanded tutorial/docs on ttk
TDBC
Compressing/uncompressing channels and built-in ZIP VFS support
PNG image support
regexp maintainer (I would love to see more work done to improve, modernize and add feature to regexp)
PCRE regexp implementation [L1 ]
Fixing Tk_Uid Leaks
TclOO ready for the core
TIP #285 (script cancellation via Tcl_CancelEval and interp cancel)
Batteries included release!
TkWeb (compile Tk code to webpages instead of regular forms, also possibly make it Volta-ish[L2 ])
Support for complex numbers and decimal numbers (AM I could not resist adding these two - it seems to me right that would be best done via two separate commands) - AM See below (after a night's sleep)
winfo workarea (Something like twapi's get_desktop_workarea for all platforms (From twapi help: The workarea is that area that is not covered by the taskbar and any application desktop toolbars.))
try ... finally ... (or something like TIP#89[L3 ])
Unicode beyond \uFFFF.
Asynchronous name resolution for socket
Adopt TclParser somehow, so that we can all get parse trees for scripts

Commentary

DKF: BI releases depend on other people to put them together. ActiveTcl's an instance of this, and both tclkit and eTcl are others. But the core bits aren't likely to be done as a BI release directly since that makes things take longer as well as being more difficult for people who want stripped-down releases.

The TkWeb idea is neat, but vanishingly unlikely to happen without contributed code.

Twylite: I'd really like to see TIP #89 (Try/Catch Exception Handling in the Core) finalised and completed. Once the syntax is agreed upon I'm pretty sure it should be possible to have a pure-Tcl implementation (backwards compatible to 8.5 and 8.4) done quite quickly, leaving some time for a C implementation before the alphas/betas.

On the BI side, a lot is possible with a small alternative to the shell/application code and built-in ZIP VFS support; perhaps the latter can be prioritised?

AM: My idea of supporting complex numbers and decimal numbers can be reduced to something simpler: add a command to convert an expression like "1+exp($a/$b)*$x" to "+ 1 [* [exp [/ $a $b]]] $x]". A (scripted or compiled) extension dealing with complex numbers, or arrays of numbers, if you like, can then simply implement procedures +, exp, * suitable for the "number" system and evaluate the resultant command.

LV: Donal, is it safe to say that just because something is on the wish list does not guarantee that feature will make it into 8.6? Traditionally, Tcl hasn't had a development team working on new features. That hasn't changed, right? Normally, if someone wants to see particular new features appear in a version, it would behoove them to participate either contributing time, money, encouragement, bribes, etc.

DKF: Correct. Contributions to make things happen (code/patches are best) will improve the chances, and all the wishes here by me are done with at least a fair chunk of "user of Tcl" perspective. And I bet that zlib support gets done; too many other things depend on it.