DN630305722

Subject: Re: TCL/TK on MacOS-X: Jim Ingham works at APPLE!? - DN [1]

Jim Ingham <jingham@apple.com> - 02 Jun 2000 - comp.lang.tcl

 Hi, Maurice...

 >
 > As I think the port of Tk to MacOS-X would be a great
 > news for tcl and Mac user community, so I ask the question
 > publicaly to Jim Ingham.
 >
 >
 > Hello Jim!
 >
 > I just see that you have a new (?) email "jingham@apple.com" !
 >
 > Does it meens that you are working at Apple to port
 > tcl/tk on MacOS-X :-)))

 No: my day job for the past couple of years has been hacking on gdb - for
 Cygnus and then Red Hat.  As it turns out, gdb is the core debugger for
 MacOS X, so I am now hacking on gdb at Apple...  I did get full support from
 my managers here to continue working on Tcl/Tk while at Apple, but Tcl/Tk
 support for MacOS is still my evening playtime.  Apple is working hard to
 incorporate AppleScript throughout MacOS X - a VERY good thing, IMHO - so
 that is where most of their "scripting" level efforts are focused.  OTOH,
 being able to get my hands on debugging builds of the OS should make
 supporting Tk on the Mac somewhat easier :-)

 >
 > As Darwing (the core of MacOS-X mach/BSD based) is
 > Opens Source by APPLE, and as MacOS-X should be
 > release as a public beta this summer.
 > Can we have some state on the future of tcl/tk
 > on MacOS-X?

 Tcl is already part of the core MacOS X distribution - the GNU compiler
 tools (gcc & gdb & friends) use dejagnu, which is based on Expect, to run
 their test suites, so you can't really have a GNU based system without a Tcl
 port (an odd irony given RMS's statements on the matter...)

 Wilfredo Sanchez added support to Tcl for the MacOS X dynamic linker, which
 is somewhat different from the standard Unix variants, and this code has
 made it back to the core distribution.  There are some Makefile changes that
 haven't made their way back yet.  I will look at how to fix these up when I
 get half a mo...  But you can get Makefiles that work from the Darwin
 distribution.

 Tk for X is still a "to be done" (as, by the way, are the latest binaries
 for Tcl/Tk for MacOS 9 - oops...)  Part of the reason for this is that I
 have been really busy - with finishing up all my duties at Red Hat, and
 starting here.  But also realistically, I have been facing the fact that if
 I continue to put effort into the MacOS 9 code, my chances of ever getting a
 MacOS X port done are very slim.  I work on X every day, not on MacOS 9, and
 I want a Tk I can use there (among other things there is NO good Man page
 reader; I am dying for a version of TkMan...)

 So, with apologies to all the MacOS 9 users who don't have snazzy new G3's
 or G4's, my intention is to turn my efforts to MacOS X.  If someone else
 wants to take up building binaries for MacOS 9, and maintaining that code,
 that would be REALLY great.  I will be glad to answer questions, of course.

 I am not going to try to keep the code base common between the MacOS 9 code,
 and the MacOS X code.  There are several reasons for this.  One is that as
 long as Tk relies on MacTCP for its MacOS 9 sockets code, you can't build a
 carbonized version of it, so you can't work from a common code base.
 Another is that there are some mismatches between the QuickDraw drawing
 model and Tk's (look at the Arrowhead editing demo for an example) which are
 trivially solved using the Quartz drawing.  But this is NOT a part of
 Carbon, and is only available on MacOS X.  Also, I want a little more
 freedom to experiment with a better event model than the one in the current
 port, which is not altogether satisfactory.  And in general, the MacTk port
 is pretty crusty in places, and it will be better to make a clean start,
 rather than trying to bend around all that old code to serve two fairly
 different masters...

 >
 > Also is there any work which the tkGS project
 > (from Frédéric BONNET)?

 I haven't looked at this much; truth to tell I have only just started to
 think about the MacOS X port.  So I don't really know what the state of the
 TkGS stuff is.  The Quartz drawing model is VERY flexible & powerful, so we
 should be able to do pretty much anything that TkGS needs with little
 effort.  But whether that is the way to go or not in the grand scale also
 depends on how far along TkGS is, and whether the Ajuba folks really are
 planning to incorporate it or not...

 Hope this helps.

 Jim

 >
 >
 > P.S.
 > I work on Macintosh with linuxppc waiting for a usable
 > MacOS-X with X11 serveur (or without if tk does work?)

 Sorry, you'll have to stay with linuxppc for a while.  Tk doesn't work, as I
 said above, and I also haven't seen an X11 server yet, though I imagine some
 enterprising company will come through with this at some point.  There are
 versions for NeXTStep floating around, so...

 Jim