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/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.

These issues seem to have been discussed/debated for many years. But progress seems either painfully slow or non-existent.

But what struck me about the debate in [Tcl Common Library] was that though these issues are always thought of as separate and un-related - in fact the are all really just subsets of the ''Tcl Standard Library''.