While we're waiting for someone to synthesize a coherent essay on the topic above, here's valuable reading to warm us all up to the topic:
[Sort the order of the stuff above.]
Why privilege FORTRAN? That is, why wouldn't this have been a better page, titled "... on interacting with applications written in other languages ..." or "... how to write Tcl/Tk applications with external programs that request character-based interaction"?
It's a good question. First, if someone writes such a page, I'm one contributor who'll happily factor out common elements, and refer to them there.
For me, FORTRAN does deserve special attention, for several reasons:
For all these reasons, CL regards it as advantageous to address FORTRANners specifically.
I don't think it's so much giving FORTRAN a privilege, it's a question of getting FORTRAN in the title, so the page comes up in a search for FORTRAN.
Who chose this super long title? It's much too long for referencing it in a pleasing manner. Michael Schlenker
I committed it, Michael--I'm Cameron. I thought it would work out well. I must not be seeing it the same way. Hmmmm; I'm not sure what to do now, except to have you help convince me to style things differently in the future.
LV Well, one can always refer to the number of the page, to get a shorter though non-descript, title,