A comment from a Nov 2003 'state of the union' report [http://freedesktop.org/~jg/roadmap.html] by Jim Gettys (a creator of [X11]): ''"Another obsolete toolkit, but often used with the [TCL] scripting language, is the [Tk] toolkit. It, however, at least preserved some of the original ideas of Joel Bartlett's ezd's program canvas to have been adopted by other toolkits, including [GTK]+. It's most visible application has been the "make xconfig" program used for configuring [Linux] prior to Linux 2.6."'' In what ways is he right? ''According to my dictionary, one definition of obsolete is "outmoded in design, style or construction". In that regard I'd say he is correct. Tk does seem to be outmoded in design or style, perhaps. But even that point is arguable.'' In what ways is he wrong? ''Another definition of obsolete is "no longer in use", which is very far from the truth'' What's needed to change such a perception? Is Tk now a niche toolkit, and if so, what is that niche? ---- Jim Gettys is an X guy, and in that space (ignoring [windows] and mac), Tk has just about completely fallen off the map. Most everyone uses GTK or [Qt]. - davidw ---- [LES]: Bah! [X] has been utterly obsolete for 10 years or so. The *nix world only uses it for lack of a better option. As soon as a (really) good graphical environment for *nix arises, [X] will be thrown away so quickly we'll barely have time to back up our $HOME directories. ---- [SS]: You are right, for [X] there is not better option for now, but there is for Tk: Gtk, Qt, [Wxwindows], and so on, so people don't use Tk just as you imagine they'll throw away [X]. Tk got a lot of stuff right when it appeared, but now is time to update (very hard), or to use a modern toolkit as front-end, like Tk does for win32. Note that [Gtk] is quite good for the purpose because it has a canvas widget. And about the idea that the only problem with Tk is the fact that it looks like [Motif], I think there are more problems than that: 1) too few widgets, 2) feel in general is more row, 3) you can't use it from [C] directly, that turns to be you can't write bindings for other scripting languages without to open a Tcl interpreter. My feeling is that the part to take from Tk is the API, for all the rest there is already opensource code waiting to work as modern front-end without to cost hours to the Tcl comunity. ---- [LV] While it is true that, from a [C] or [C++] programmer's point of view, more code is being written using gtk/kde toolkits, what about from a scripting language point of view - what scripting language / alternative windowing toolkit has more code being written? Then, on top of that, add cross platform to the criteria. Is there a language and windowing toolkit which is used in more cross platform applications than some language and tk? ---- [davidw]: LV, [Python] has both [Tkinter] and [wxWindows]. Tkinter is included in the Python distribution, so it's still pretty popular, but wxWindows appears to be gaining ground rapidly. Getting the native look/feel on linux, mac and windows is very attractive. ---- [FW]: IMO, practically the sole reason the casual ''user'' of Tk on X would perceive it as outdated is because it looks like Motif, which does have a stigma. There's the style part. ---- [PWQ] 23/11/03: What ever happened to adding transparency to the core? IE when can you type: entry .e -background {} At the time there was a large body of users that slated the lack of transparency for the reluctance of people to use Tk. IMO the specifing and handling of [options] is another arcane feature. [DKF]: What I don't see (with a few exceptions) are people that are using Tk for their business also coughing up some money to help pay for development of Tk. They're instead relying on the free time of people who are often rather busy with other things. They're entitled to do that, but it doesn't help secure their investment into the future. And the people who know how Tk works will continue doing other things for a large fraction of their time to help pay the bills... ---- ''Rumors of Tk's demise are greatly exaggerated...'' ---- [davidw]: I think what I still really like about Tk is the simplicity and elegance that pervade the Tcl way of doing things. Do the common thing quickly and easily, and then add options if you want to do something fancy. I think that's a pretty smart way of doing things, and it involves a genuinely different approach than just ugly copies of C API's... procs/functions with 12 different arguments that must be filled in. ---- 2003-11-25 [VI] I am a hardware engr who was a software engr and use Tcl extensively. In the EDA Tool world, Tcl is just catching up. Every single vendor is switching to be Tcl based, and it's vendor neutral. Both Synopsys and Cadence (arch-enemies in everything else) use Tcl as the base for everything (examples are Design Compiler from Synopsys and NC Verilog from Cadence, vsim from Mentor Graphics). Some have always been that way and some are new converts. Tcl is in my world to stay - at least for the next 10 years...