From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Lucio De Re To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Limbo Tk FAQ? Message-ID: <20010524150410.J21254@cackle.proxima.alt.za> References: <20010524122830.E1528199C0@mail.cse.psu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: <20010524122830.E1528199C0@mail.cse.psu.edu>; from forsyth@vitanuova.com on Thu, May 24, 2001 at 01:29:54PM +0100 Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 15:04:11 +0200 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a785b866-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 01:29:54PM +0100, forsyth@vitanuova.com wrote: > > i thought the Inferno implementation was tidier. > I like Tcl, personally, as an unstructured programming language and find the artifice of submitting tk commands to a specialised inner interpreter quite at odds with its usability. That is the way perl and python use tk, too, isn't it? I really find it silly to use a tcl-like environment and not have tcl's most useful features avaiable. But then tcl is one of my preferences for both simple and complex programming tasks. Brent Welch's web server based on tcl is one of the most inspired and inspiring tools I've had occasion to work with. A real *tool*, not just another application. I find tcl far from perfect but it sure beats awk and perl hands down. Rc might be better as an embeddable command language, but some of the weirder concepts in tcl, like "upvar" and "uplevel" are quite hard to simulate in any other programming environment. And they make all the difference in embeddable applications (like adding posgresql _and_ LDAP to the web server). And while on that tack, I think Dave Presotto mentioned looking at "expect", has anyone got some idea how to implement something like expect without PTYs? I get the impression from Don Libes' book that it is possible, but the results would be unsatisfactory, yet there has to be a Plan 9 concept that can be used as a generic "data entry" device. I must confess I have not searched very carefully, but nothing comes to _my_ mind... ++L