Mark Roseman's Blog

Catching Up.

Got back Sunday afternoon, just trying to get caught up with everything. New CF/PF releases went out just now, the big thing being SSL in PF. A few more things to do there, then spend a bit of time figuring out where we're at with the Tk project.

Going to be away for a few days.

Pauline's grandfather died Friday night, so we're going to head out to Edmonton for a bit... leaving Tuesday morning and coming back over the weekend. Should be on email the whole time.

Not necessarily a bad time to be getting away from here with the power thing anyway... we were only out for about five hours so not a big deal, but doing our part to cut down usage (i.e. no air conditioning, ouch). Glad once again also that we've got Westjet out of the Hamilton airport ten minutes away rather than having to fight the chaos and serial inconveniences involved with flying out of Pearson...

Thinking About Tk.

Had lunch with Michael from Frogware on Monday... that and getting the espresso machine fixed were a good excuse to go into Toronto. We had a good chat, talked about a lot of stuff, about how we grew his company and manages it, working to achieve a good balance. Also talked a fair bit about Tk, and the lack of decent alternatives for a lot of applications (if you want to go beyond more than a single platform, and need something that doesn't have the footprint of Java). We both think Tk isn't that far off (hence the revitalization project), but that getting there via the open source volunteer model is still going to be a big challenge.

A nice development seems to be a push from the Tcl core group for the Tk UI improvements to be probably the main defining feature of 8.5. This is good, but it would be even nicer if we could get closer to a detailed task list and schedule on our end. Steve and I are trying to come to terms with that over the next week or so.

Interaction Architect.

Tog on choosing a new name and properly branding people doing the design side of HCI work. It's a good name and I hope it sticks. And I have to say, any article about HCI people that starts off with "I have met the enemy and he is us" is right on track.

Tk Revitalization.

As I mentioned, one of the big things to come out of the conference was a big push towards wanting to modernize Tk.

Lots of people are in the same situation I've seen myself in... we like Tk a lot, but the look and feel is so outdated. We've looked around at all the other options (e.g. Java, PythonWin, GTK, etc.) and while they tend to be better looking, they've also all got major shortcomings too. The question then becomes, what to do?

Tk isn't that far away from being decent looking, and in fact a lot of people out there have made it look good. This can be done through the inclusion of a variety of non-core widgets, careful mucking with widget options, attention to spacing, etc. Rather than everyone reinventing the wheel, it made sense to try to focus some of that effort and energy so that everyone can benefit - by rolling those improvements into the core in some reasonable way.

We've opened up a ProjectForum site on tcl.projectforum.com for this, which Steve Landers and I will moderate for now. We think in the end trying to brush the dust off Tk will give a better result with less effort than investing in any of the other solutions out there.

We'll see how it goes...

Photos from Tcl/Tk Conference.

Back from Michigan... I've posted some pictures from the conference. Lots of good discussion kick-started by Larry McVoy about modernizing Tk and other user interface stuff. I'll have lots more to say about that soon.