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:-
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. And to make progress on these issues, we need to create a Tcl Standard Library Specification that describes how all of these things fit together.
Or to put it another way - a properly designed Tcl Standard Library should (in my opinion,) provide answers and solutions to all the problems/issues listed above.
But the first thing to do, is to create a Tcl Standard Library Specification - that describes exactly what the Tcl Standard Library is. And how it addresses and solves all these outstanding issues/problems.
So that's what this page and theTcl Standard Library are all about.