[VTK ARB] TCL/TK: is it needed anymore in VTK?

[Andrew Maclean]

Hi Will,

I have just now had a look at slicer and see what you mean.

Regards
   Andrew


On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Will Schroeder
<will.schroeder at kitware.com>wrote:

> Andrew-
>
> I see your point and agree, I'm thinking that applications like
> Slicer, which at one time had large dependencies on Tcl, would not be
> happy (although this is fast changing). So if this were to occur it
> would have to be staged over a very long time, probably after some of
> us older guys bite the big one :-)
>
> W
>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Andrew Maclean
> <andrew.amaclean at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > This is just for discussion and it was prompted by a throw-away comment
> by
> > someone in the last VTK ARB Meeting regarding TCL.
> > So:
> > In the beginning ... when VTK was just a baby (and a lot of you at
> Kitware
> > were still in primary school!), TCL was really essential and useful
> because
> > at that time there were no other rapid development/prototyping languages
> > that were cross-platform and easy to use. So at that time (late 90's
> early
> > 2000's) TCL was really great in that you could rapidly prototype
> something
> > and then code in C++. Yes I know that Python was around at that time but
> TCL
> > usage was more widespread.
> > Now... we have Python and using Python is really convenient because the
> > transition to C++ and or Java is relatively simple.
> > I know that there are still tests and examples that use TCL in the VTK
> tree
> > but lots of these have moved to C++.
> > Also if you look in wikiexamples, there are 6 tcl examples vs around 59
> > python examples, 11 java and lots and lots of C++ examples. So to me this
> is
> > saying that TCL is fading into obscurity. You could argue on
> > these figures that Java is not doing so well either but good Java
> > programmers can easily convert C++ to Java so I suspect Java programmers
> > just use the C++ examples.
> > From my own experience I have found it is far simpler to prototype in
> Python
> > and then develop in C++. I used to use TCL (because nothing else was
> around
> > in the old days), but switched to Python because I found that students
> and
> > coders were more able to use Python than TCL mainly because of syntax
> > issues. The main point is that the syntax of Python is modern but TCL is
> > not.
> > Is there a really strong reason for supporting TCL in the future?
> >
> > I have no issues with Java and Python and our efforts should go to
> > supporting these two languages. I acknowledge that there is
> an Achilles heel
> > in Python in that Python 3+ is different from 2.x but you can work around
> > these issues and I am seeing some development now moving off 2.x to
> version
> > 3.x. However the Python 3.x api seems to be closer to C++ than the 2.x
> > versions so in the future more programmers will move to it.
> > Regards
> >   Andrew
> > --
> > ___________________________________________
> > Andrew J. P. Maclean
> > Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR)
> > The Rose Street Building J04
> > The University of Sydney  2006  NSW
> > AUSTRALIA
> > Ph: +61 2 9351 3283
> > Fax: +61 2 9351 7474
> > URL: http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/
> > ___________________________________________
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Arb at vtk.org
> > http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arb
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> William J. Schroeder, PhD
> Kitware, Inc.
> 28 Corporate Drive
> Clifton Park, NY 12065
> will.schroeder at kitware.com
> http://www.kitware.com
> (518) 881-4902
>



-- 
___________________________________________
Andrew J. P. Maclean
Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR)
The Rose Street Building J04
The University of Sydney  2006  NSW
AUSTRALIA
Ph: +61 2 9351 3283
Fax: +61 2 9351 7474
URL: http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/
___________________________________________
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