[PD] Ever divorce from Tcl/Tk? (Was Re: puredata_gui_design)

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Mon May 3 20:59:01 CEST 2010


On Mon, 3 May 2010, András Murányi wrote:

> What's more, i'm in a constant state of irony towards the world i'm 
> living in. (Sorry about it.)  

No need to be sorry about that.

> Well, an API is normally language independent so it would not be a thing 
> to mention. The layer which plays the role of the API currently, 
> however, uses Tcl strings often.  

You mean pieces of Tcl code ?... Now if it only looked like Tcl data, 
instead, would it be better ?... In the end, a text representation has to 
be chosen, and it better be similar to an existing programming language.

> Maybe, maybe not, and this is really beyond my current knowledge. 
> Forking, i suppose, will need a significant amount of additional 
> resources, as Tcl plays a great part in current Pd. So i'm still 
> interested in debating over Tcl - whether we think it's fast enough, 
> smart enough, and future-proof enough to stay with.

Well, have you considered that Tcl supports more gui toolkits than just 
Tk, and that Tk can also run in many different programming languages ? 
And also, Tk is open-source (and could be hacked to become faster), and 
it's possible to make Tk widgets that emulate Tk Canvas.

Thus instead of a one-piece Tcl/Tk yes/no question, it's more like four 
different questions... plus any additional possibilities that I'm not 
stating here.

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| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801


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