Re: Writing something.......

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@omegacs.net>]

> Well, not specific program categories, but I'll second the motion that we
> need to actually start producing something tangible.
Precisely.

> I encourage all of us to try to gain some familiarity with Tcl/Tk, as it
> looks like a pretty easy and quick way
Having had experience with several scripting languages, including Tcl and 
Perl, I'd be hesitant to do too much with Tcl/Tk myself.  I have had little 
luck working with Tcl, mostly because of its syntax and intent.  It's a 
scripting language, not an applications language.  For the simpler of the 
programs suggested here, it would be *ideal*, especially if Visual Tcl does 
the trick.  But for the larger ones, I would be writing them in Perl/[g]tk. 

My friend at work learned the basics of Perl yesterday via Perl/Tk, but is 
looking into Tcl/Tk for some things now because it works on win32 as well 
(yuck).  It all depends on what you want to do.

My point is just that we need to be careful what languages we choose to 
write in, as well as what toolkits.  The main reason I suggest Perl is that 
it has Gtk bindings, and soon will have CORBA/IDL bindings, allowing one to 
utilize any CORBA-ized object, such as a SEUL-help browser.  I don't think 
Tcl is doing that any time soon.

> to generate small, appealing apps (so long as they aren't compute-
> intensive).  If anyone wants to help me with the HyperCard/Visual Tcl
> nascent project, just let me know.
For smaller apps, as well as things that end-users can write, this is a 
perfect project.  I haven't seen Visual Tcl myself yet, but I'd say this 
would be a perfect project for a few people to get started on.  I don't 
know how flexible the original author is, but I'd like to see any changes 
we have go into the main branch, if appropriate.  Heck, we could even host 
the project... ;)  (we're already hosting the FreeHDL and gEDA projects)

TTYL,
    Omega


     Erik Walthinsen <omega@seul.org> - SEUL Project system architect
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