Peter Newman 24 April 2004

'''INTRODUCTION'''

The ''Tcl Standard Library Specification'' is an idea that arose from the April 2004 discussion on [Tcl Common library].

The idea of a ''Tcl Standard Library'' was floated, and generated a lot of interest. But there were so many ideas, so many issues! Lots of people want a ''Tcl Standard Library''. But there were many different ideas as to what that actually was.

During that discussion, I realised that though Tcl is great, there are still lots of outstanding issues that haven't been resolved. For example:-

   * The lack of a standard distribution system - like Perl's CPAN and RPM.

   * The ''Tiny Tcl/Minimal Core'' versus ''Batteries Included Core'' issue. We seem to have a compromise solution at the moment, that neither side is entirely happy with.

   * The stagnation of certain aspects of Tcl - like skinning/theming of the core widgets, for example.

   * The poor documentation of many of the core commands, widgets and concepts.

   * Outstanding issues regarding TEA and CVS and how to create packages and enhancements to Tcl.

   * The continual talk/work on ''megawidgets'' and ''MegaWidget Librarys''.

   * And there may well be many more. If there is, just let me know.