Magically-disappearing tclsh8.5 (was: any good audio/video editing apps in macports?)

[Jim Graham]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 05:04:04PM -0500, Lawrence Vel?zquez wrote:
> On Feb 24, 2013, at 2:58 PM, Jim Graham <spooky130u at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> A valid point, of course. We generally try to provide multiple options
> in situations where versions matter for one reason or another. For
> instance, see the plethora of ports for compilers, Python, GTK, KDE,
> etc.

I would actually prefer something more like:

   tcl8.4
   tcl8.5
   tcl8.6
   tk8.4
   tk8.5
   tk8.6

Then it doesn't matter.  A new release of macports, with a new version of
Tcl/Tk, just adds another level to the above.

> The Tcl update was something of a hiccup. Here are a couple of previous
> discussion on the matter.
> 
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.macports.devel/21169

I can definitely answer one question I saw in that discussion....
"Besides macports, do people use Tcl/Tk much?"

The answer to that is a resounding YES, people do.  Just see the
Tclers Wiki (http://wiki.tcl.tk/) and Applications in Tcl and Tcl/Tk
(http://wiki.tcl.tk/693.html).  You can also look at my JStrack page
on the Wiki (http://wiki.tcl.tk/363) or on
http://www.jstrack.org/jstrack/ (jstrack.org provided by the Kendrick
Group---also JStrack users).  I wrote JStrack in straight Tcl/Tk, and
as I added some features (e.g., display of and/or overlaying the tracking
charts with GOES EAST satellite imagery).

Btw, JStrack is not currently part of macports...just mentioning that to
keep things straight.

Oh, and just for what it's worth....  The Caribbean Hurricane Network
(the main site in the Caribbean for hurricane info)'s top boss (who I
"spoke" to---via e-mail) told me that it was not a coincidence that
JStrack was listed first in their list of hurricane tracking programs;
he said it was listed first because in his opinion it's the best of all
of them, free (like JStrack) or paid.  I've seen similar comments all
over the 'Net.  That's all Tcl/Tk and extensions (well, there are a
couple of utils from pbmplus (or is it netpbm these days...never can
remember which is the current name).  Right now, it uses 8.4.x (with
8.4.19 being the most current and preferred).

Tcl/Tk is quite powerful.  When JStrack was still in its infancy, a
friend that I worked with told me that he'd worked on a project similar
in graphics usage done in C, and that what I'd done at that time in 2000
lines (comments and blank lines for clarity included) of Tcl/Tk, would,
with a VERY good graphics library, take AT LEAST 80,000 lines of C code.
The ratio, however, is typically around 10:1, i.e., you can do in one
line of Tcl what would take about 10 lines in C/C++.  In doing programs
in Tcl (no Tk) that I'd previously done in C, I found this ratio to be
very consistent.

Point is, the answer to that person's question is a solid YES, it is
used extensively outside of macports.

> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.macports.devel/21380

That one is next....

> If the differences between 8.{4,5,6}.x are that significant, perhaps we
> ought to have tcl-8.4 and tcl-8.5 ports. Then updates to one would not
> affect the others.

I strongly agree.  And yes, the difference are that significant and
beyond.  You should have heard the outcry when it went from 7.6.x
(or was it 7.4.x? that was back in the 90s) to 8.x.  That required
a *LOT* or re-work.  Fortunately for me, that's back when I was just
learning Tcl/Tk and Expect (one of those extensions I was talking
about), so I didn't have too much code to upgrade.  Other people
had very large amounts of code that had to be upgraded to work
with 8.x.  Dr. Ousterhout and his Tcl/Tk group (then at Sun) made a lot
of people a bit, shall we say, upset with them back then....

Later,
   --jim

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