Re: [TCLCORE] CFV on small high-prio TIPs (#306)

[Damon C. <da...@tc...>]

> Let me note that I strongly favor some auto-naming of widgets.  I
> advocate it and use it in the Perl/Tkx binding that I wrote.  However,
> it conflicts with years of standard coding style in Tcl, especially  
> wrt
> megawidget libraries.  After looking a little further, snidgets  
> could be
> made to support this at the base level in one code spot (the advantage
> of such a system).  However, many older systems spread out there  
> widget
> creation among the widgets in a way that is more fragile.
>
> Shall I take the opportunity to push TIP#180 again?  ;)

     I would like to note that not only should TIP 180 support the  
auto-naming of widgets, I would go one step further and say that TIP  
180 should also support some sort of standard, default option on all  
widgets to create an "alias" of sorts.  Then, I would add a single  
configure command that handles them.

     90% of the widgets created in Tk are forgotten in the code  
because we don't care or need to know anything about them.  This is  
made even more so by things like -variable and -textvariable which  
almost let us completely ignore the widget itself.  For the other 10%,  
we all end up coding some crap like:

global w

set w(myEntry) [entry .e]
$w(myEntry) configure -background blue

     This is where the new option comes in.  Something like:

entry .e -alias myEntry
configure myEntry -background blue

     Throw in the auto-naming stuff, and you've got yourself a nice  
way to work with what you care about and lose the rest in the noise.

D