I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting with Nadkarni's excellent book.

But I'm wondering about the state of Tcl/Tk.

- The most recent alpha for Tcl/Tk 8.7 was released almost two years ago.
- The extension repository https://core.tcl-lang.org/jenglish/gutter/ doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years. Or has this been superceded by something/somewhere else?
- I notice that on the developer site there's mention of Tcl 9.0.

Is 8.7 likely to be released, or will 9.0 be the next significant release?

And purely out of curiosity (I'm happy enough with 8.6*) is there a release schedule, or is it a matter of "it'll be released when it's ready"?

* Although for 8.7 (or 9.0) I'm looking forward to being able to use 0d for integers because I've been caught out on that; also for ttk widgets to respect my cursor blink rate.

Mark <m.n.summerfield@googlemail.com> writes:
> I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting
> with Nadkarni's excellent book.
>
> But I'm wondering about the state of Tcl/Tk.
>
> - The most recent alpha for Tcl/Tk 8.7 was released almost two years ago.
> - The extension repository https://core.tcl-lang.org/jenglish/gutter/
> doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years. Or has this
> been superceded by something/somewhere else?
> - I notice that on the developer site there's mention of Tcl 9.0.
>
> Is 8.7 likely to be released, or will 9.0 be the next significant release?

Tcl and Tk development is managed by the Tcl Core Team (TCT). I'm not a
member of this team, so I'm just commenting as someone who try to follow
things as he can.

The original official plan was (and maybe is) to have both Tcl 8.7 and
Tcl 9 more of less in parallel. The according Tk will be work with both.

During the last half year it was brought up by a few that it maybe would
be better to skip 8.7 and have only 9.0. (Disclaimer: I tend to support
this position.) Although, there are no decisions so far by the TCT, not
even the decision that there is to take a decision.

> And purely out of curiosity (I'm happy enough with 8.6*) is there a
> release schedule, or is it a matter of "it'll be released when it's
> ready"?

I'm not aware of a official release schedule, so it's perhaps the later.

The problem is that we need 8.7 not now, but in the past (yesterday).

Tcl 8.6 is dated, unicode support is severely lacking. Emojis are
everywhere.

George

Στις 4/6/2023 1:17 π.μ., ο/η Rolf Ade έγραψε:
>
> Mark <m.n.summerfield@googlemail.com> writes:
>> I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting
>> with Nadkarni's excellent book.
>>
>> But I'm wondering about the state of Tcl/Tk.
>>
>> - The most recent alpha for Tcl/Tk 8.7 was released almost two years ago.
>> - The extension repository https://core.tcl-lang.org/jenglish/gutter/
>> doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years. Or has this
>> been superceded by something/somewhere else?
>> - I notice that on the developer site there's mention of Tcl 9.0.
>>
>> Is 8.7 likely to be released, or will 9.0 be the next significant release?
>
> Tcl and Tk development is managed by the Tcl Core Team (TCT). I'm not a
> member of this team, so I'm just commenting as someone who try to follow
> things as he can.
>
> The original official plan was (and maybe is) to have both Tcl 8.7 and
> Tcl 9 more of less in parallel. The according Tk will be work with both.
>
> During the last half year it was brought up by a few that it maybe would
> be better to skip 8.7 and have only 9.0. (Disclaimer: I tend to support
> this position.) Although, there are no decisions so far by the TCT, not
> even the decision that there is to take a decision.
>
>> And purely out of curiosity (I'm happy enough with 8.6*) is there a
>> release schedule, or is it a matter of "it'll be released when it's
>> ready"?
>
> I'm not aware of a official release schedule, so it's perhaps the later.

On Sat, 3 Jun 2023, Mark wrote:

> I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting with Nadkarni's excellent book.

Good idea!

What worries me, is, how tcl lost popularity:

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

Why? Why?!

Who are the people (like me) that still likes it and
prefer it to the lot of other scripting languages.

R.

Am 06.06.2023 um 11:52 schrieb Georgios Petasis:
> The problem is that we need 8.7 not now, but in the past (yesterday).
>
> Tcl 8.6 is dated, unicode support is severely lacking. Emojis are
> everywhere.
>
> George

+1 (of cause)
But I would write "TCL 9.0/Tk 8.7", as TCL 8.7 does not solve the EMOJI
issue, as it uses surrogates.

>
> Στις 4/6/2023 1:17 π.μ., ο/η Rolf Ade έγραψε:
>>
>> Mark <m.n.summerfield@googlemail.com> writes:
>>> I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting
>>> with Nadkarni's excellent book.
>>>
>>> But I'm wondering about the state of Tcl/Tk.
>>>
>>> - The most recent alpha for Tcl/Tk 8.7 was released almost two years
>>> ago.
>>> - The extension repository https://core.tcl-lang.org/jenglish/gutter/
>>> doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years. Or has this
>>> been superceded by something/somewhere else?
>>> - I notice that on the developer site there's mention of Tcl 9.0.
>>>
>>> Is 8.7 likely to be released, or will 9.0 be the next significant
>>> release?
>>
>> Tcl and Tk development is managed by the Tcl Core Team (TCT). I'm not a
>> member of this team, so I'm just commenting as someone who try to follow
>> things as he can.
>>
>> The original official plan was (and maybe is) to have both Tcl 8.7 and
>> Tcl 9 more of less in parallel. The according Tk will be work with both.
>>
>> During the last half year it was brought up by a few that it maybe would
>> be better to skip 8.7 and have only 9.0. (Disclaimer: I tend to support
>> this position.) Although, there are no decisions so far by the TCT, not
>> even the decision that there is to take a decision.
>>
>>> And purely out of curiosity (I'm happy enough with 8.6*) is there a
>>> release schedule, or is it a matter of "it'll be released when it's
>>> ready"?
>>
>> I'm not aware of a official release schedule, so it's perhaps the later.
>

On Tue, 6 Jun 2023 10:15:48 +0000, Roderick wrote:

> What worries me, is, how tcl lost popularity:
>
> https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
>
> Why? Why?!

"tcl lost popularity"

I remember that was a recurrent topic in the early to mid oughts.
And yet, here we are.

--
Luc
>>

On Tue, 6 Jun 2023, Luc wrote:

> "tcl lost popularity"
>
> I remember that was a recurrent topic in the early to mid oughts.
> And yet, here we are.

Do not you see it is alarming?

In Tiobes index is interesting to see that also R is only on
place 17, below Fortran, in spite of all the hype on data science.

In principle, tcl is omnipresent, in pythos Tkinter, but now there
are alternatives. It is also in R core package tcltk. Just good,
but in some way also frustrating.

Just to comment on the package repository. In short, we do not have a central repository (although I feel we really, really should have it).

Repositories such as the "gutter" by Joe English were always driven by individual people and I guess they just can't catch up with what is going on. It needs to be the other way around with package writers needing to submit their stuff to the repository instead of one soul needing to track progress.

We once had ActiveState's "teapot" which probably was the most promising candidate for a central repository but ActiveState has changed focus and I think "teapot" is not operational any longer.

So, we have the maintained bundles of tcllib and Tklib which already provide a wealth of possibilities. And we have the Wiki (https://wiki.tcl-lang.org) which tends to be used by many package developers to document the packages and provide links. However, this is not a unified repository where could search by topic etc. Having said that, both together will probably have nearly all packages listed somewhere which are kind of still being maintained.... if that helps.

On Saturday, June 3, 2023 at 6:53:57 PM UTC+2, Mark wrote:
> I'm slowly (re)learning Tcl/Tk and enjoying the process. I'm starting with Nadkarni's excellent book.
>
> But I'm wondering about the state of Tcl/Tk.
>
> - The most recent alpha for Tcl/Tk 8.7 was released almost two years ago.
> - The extension repository https://core.tcl-lang.org/jenglish/gutter/ doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years. Or has this been superceded by something/somewhere else?
> - I notice that on the developer site there's mention of Tcl 9.0.
>
> Is 8.7 likely to be released, or will 9.0 be the next significant release?
>
> And purely out of curiosity (I'm happy enough with 8.6*) is there a release schedule, or is it a matter of "it'll be released when it's ready"?
>
> * Although for 8.7 (or 9.0) I'm looking forward to being able to use 0d for integers because I've been caught out on that; also for ttk widgets to respect my cursor blink rate.

On Wed, 14 Jun 2023 07:18:35 -0700 (PDT), Torsten Berg wrote:

>Just to comment on the package repository. In short, we do not have a
>central repository (although I feel we really, really should have it).
**************************

Just out of curiosity, is there any clear criterion for packages to be
added to the core distribution?

--
Luc
>>

Not really. At least there is no document spelling that out. However, in general terms, tcllib should contain packages that ...

- contain commonly-used functions and libraries (useful in a broad variety of areas)
- use the BSD license
- have no binary dependencies
- are typically written in pure Tcl (i.e. are no binary packages, but there is tcllibc providing some packages in a high-performance C variant)

For Tklib, there was once a TIP (Tcl Improvement Proposal) outlining some requirements but that TOP was never completed (in terms of being voted on): https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/9.md

Torsten

On Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 6:16:12 PM UTC+2, Luc wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jun 2023 07:18:35 -0700 (PDT), Torsten Berg wrote:
>
> >Just to comment on the package repository. In short, we do not have a
> >central repository (although I feel we really, really should have it).
> **************************
>
> Just out of curiosity, is there any clear criterion for packages to be
> added to the core distribution?
>
> --
> Luc
> >>

On Wed, 14 Jun 2023, Torsten Berg wrote:

> Just to comment on the package repository. In short, we do not have a central repository (although I feel we really, really should have it).

I never liked the package systems of langs. I like software installation
more centralised, at level of OS.

But something like an official repository is not a bad idea.