From: Philip A. <ph...@vc...> - 2003-01-29 10:38:12
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On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 11:06 AM, Jim Ingham wrote: > Tcl has never had readline or some other fancy command line handler > built in. There were patches floating around for a while to do this, > but it was felt that Tcl's use was more as a program runner, and less > as an interactive shell, so burdening it with all the machinery of > something like readline was counter to its real mission. Ok, I can accept that but my impressions of Tcl usage originate from Pete Keleher. Just a musician who stumbled upon Alpha in the packages that came with a disk I bought. I'm aware of the distinction between Alpha and Tcl proper since I have created my own Tcl editor/shell in OS 9 with font styles, sizes, and an MPW-like <Enter key> method of command evaluation. The reason why I'm suggesting the shell keybindings is for the purposes of promoting Tcl to the AppleScript community and later on this year, when our music app gets to run on OS X, those users as well. I know what it's like to get that on OS 9 but things are quite different on OS X and right now, I don't know how to do it unix-wise. As an entry point, it's a lot nicer to have a shell that at least has arrow keys implemented and seems to me wouldn't interfere with non-interactive programs. tclsh, as one of the built-in shells, is likely to be the first impression of Tcl for many users on OS X. Unlike the denizens of this list who have perhaps half a lifetime or more of experience, project deadlines, etc., those folks are in discovery mode. From that standpoint, since they would not have had your explanation, tclsh doesn't look as good as the other shells. Not trying to change the world here Jim, but most assuredly trying to put a friendlier face on Tcl for users just stepping into the Unix world. Currently several million people of which some small percentage will venture over to explore the various shells. I believe that's a "market" worth considering. Especially if it doesn't affect current usage. Cheers, Philip > On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 08:35 AM, Philip Aker wrote: >> 'nother thing that's come up is that tclsh out of the box doesn't >> handle or inherit arrow key functionality whereas the other shells do >> via some first sourced config or .rc file. Not the same as ~/.tcshrc >> for example because you don't have to have one to get arrow key >> usage. Philip Aker http://www.aker.ca |