From: Jim I. <ji...@ap...> - 2003-01-29 18:40:51
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Phil, On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 02:39 AM, Philip Aker wrote: > 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. > > Perhaps a better solution for the non-Unix'y MacOS X folks is to package up the full TkCon as a stand-alone app and suggest folks use that. I would have no problem with shipping this in the binary distribution of AquaTk. This is much nicer than just adding command-editing keys to the Terminal version, it does on the fly syntax coloring, and has some nice help facilities, etc... We could also make it a real app (using the AppMain.tcl trick), so folks can put it in their dock & launch it from there. Jim > 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 > > > -- Jim Ingham ji...@ap... Developer Tools Apple Computer |