[vtk-developers] Tcl wrapping and output array arguments

Fri Mar 20 20:34:03 EDT 2015

I checked with Steve Pieper (Slicer guru). He does not care if tcl goes away…

Personally, I don't care. In fact I wouldn't care if we dropped java and python.

Code coverage is a concern, but that can be fixed if the tcl tests are
all converted.

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:24 PM, Berk Geveci <berk.geveci at kitware.com> wrote:
> I am not against this either but I'd like to remind people that there are 2
> VTK books that still use Tcl for their examples. We probably need to figure
> out how to transition those before discontinuing Tcl support.
>
> -berk
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 8:21 PM, Will Schroeder <will.schroeder at kitware.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Personally I have no real attachment to Tcl and can see queuing it up for
>> deprecation at some point. I'd like to get the community more widely
>> involved in this decision in terms of when, etc. since there may be some
>> significant applications out there still using it and we want to minimize
>> community disruption. There's a lot going on now anyway with the gitlab and
>> OpenGL2 changes so this is not likely to happen anytime soon.
>>
>> W
>>
>> W
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:38 PM, Andrew Maclean
>> <andrew.amaclean at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> David, David, Will, John
>>>
>>> I remember the TCL discussion, maybe the time has come to raise dropping
>>> it again. I would certainly support that. It was useful before Python was
>>> widely used but nowadays I think C++/Python/Java programmers would rarely
>>> (if ever) need to use it. Personally I find it difficult to understand and
>>> use.It is not a modern language,
>>>
>>> One of the reasons TCL was useful in the "old days" was that a lot of the
>>> testing code was written in it but that is hardly relevant now since we
>>> converted almost all of it into Python.
>>>
>>> Will, I did translate most of the VTK Textbook exercises into Python soon
>>> after that discussion (way back in 2012). There were a couple that I
>>> couldn't convert, see the attached document for a summary of what I have
>>> done.
>>>
>>> I'll look at converting TestSetGet and TestEmptyInput to python.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>    Andrew
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: David Lonie <david.lonie at kitware.com>
>>>> To: David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com>
>>>> Cc: VTK Developers <vtk-developers at vtk.org>
>>>> Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:00:01 -0400
>>>> Subject: Re: [vtk-developers] Tcl wrapping and output array arguments
>>>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 5:54 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 2:28 PM, David Lonie <david.lonie at kitware.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My questions:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) Is the concept of an "output array argument" even supported by Tcl?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes.  I imagine something like this could create a new array called
>>>>> "bounds":
>>>>>
>>>>>   % mapper GetBounds renderer bounds
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2) If so, how can I teach the wrappers about it?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Adding things like this to Tcl is easier than for Java or Python, but
>>>>> it's more than an afternoon's work.  I believe that Tcl will already wrap
>>>>> this method, but the wrapped method will expect 6 values as input, instead
>>>>> of expecting one name for an output array that it should create.  Because
>>>>> the wrappers can't really tell whether "double[6]" is meant to be used for
>>>>> input or output, the method will actually have to be wrapped twice, once for
>>>>> input, and once for output.  There are undoubtedly some tricky complications
>>>>> that I haven't though of, however.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, the method is not wrapped currently (according to the
>>>> generated vtkPropTcl.cxx file, anyway).
>>>>
>>>>>> And perhaps the most curious question from my point of view,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4) Why do we still provide Tcl bindings in 2015?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Because they're cool!  Actually, at this point I'm fine with them going
>>>>> away, but I'd still like to keep Tkinter (which works just fine without the
>>>>> Tcl wrappers).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The general consensus from the developers I've talked to out here is the
>>>> same -- we'd love to see Tcl go. I had a heck of a time trying to even find
>>>> a developer who remembered enough about Tcl to begin tracking down this
>>>> issue before I posted on the mailing list...and this includes the people who
>>>> wrote the original Tcl wrappers ;)
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But seriously, can we deprecate them for 6.3?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Any volunteers to convert TestSetGet and TestEmptyInput to python?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Looks like Andrew has volunteered :D
>>>>
>>>> I found this discussion from around v6.0's release:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://vtk.1045678.n5.nabble.com/Modularization-Context2D-and-Tcl-td5594211.html
>>>>
>>>> Looks like there was a fair bit of resistance against dropping Tcl 2-3
>>>> years ago, so I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be to push for this now.
>>>>
>>>> But if supporting such a simple method like this requires "more than an
>>>> afternoon's work" to teach Tcl to understand it, it sounds like more of a
>>>> burden than a benefit. From what I'm seeing, it's a non-trivial amount of
>>>> work to keep Tcl working with new APIs and few active developers actually
>>>> remember Tcl well enough to work on it. Not to mention that in my few years
>>>> here at Kitware, I've never actually come across an active project that uses
>>>> Tcl -- not to say they don't exist, but they seem quite rare these days.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, decisions like these are beyond me. I'm just a C++ guy
>>>> trying to add a simple new method to the library :-)
>>>>
>>>> Dave
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ___________________________________________
>>> Andrew J. P. Maclean
>>>
>>> ___________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
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