[TCLCORE] Tk meeting report on 2024-11-26

[Harald O. <har...@el...>]

Dear Tk team,

the Tk team meeting took place today on Jitsi with 9 participants.

1) Tk release plan
Don asked the Tk team to give information about a possible decoupling of 
the Tk release plan from Tcl to allow more releases.

The result is as follows:
R1) Tcl and Tk should be generally released together.
- This allows to test only again one Tcl version and not more of them.
- Users are not confused by release plans
R2) There should be a predictable release plan
- one release per year for new features is seen as favourable. Other 
major projects like python release once per year.
- The release should be predictable, for example in October
- There is no need for more releases due to fancy new features
R3) Release quickly in case of major bugs
- In case of a critical bug, a quicker release may be done. This is 
currently done with 8.6.16
- (only) in this case, Tk may be released without Tcl. The version 
number should be in line with Tcl. An idea is to use a sub-version 
number like "8.6.16.1". This is possible but untested.

For some Tk developers, Tcl is seen as a "black box". Nevertheless, the 
interfaces and features are floating. For example, Unicode functionality 
like word boundaries etc may be better placed in Tcl, not Tk.

2) Celebrate tk 9.0 and tkinter 9.0
The radical changes in the Mac Port and the great tkinter release was 
highlighted in the meeting.

3) New text widget
There was an informal discussion on the new text widget.
Francois has put it as a loadable package on chipseal:
https://chiselapp.com/user/fvogel/repository/rtext
This allows to test it beside the current text widget.
Paul has included it in bawt as optional package.

The code is described as a masterpiece very hard to maintain. The 
creator is unfortunately gone.
The performance is described as a factor of 5 to 25 times faster, also 
with tablelist.

Currently, there is no Mac build. Francois is seeking for a build 
recipe/method for the Mac. It builds on Mac as part of Tk, but not as an 
extension.

4) Next meeting
The tk meeting was seen as a great opportunity to meet people.
A monthly schedule is seen as adequate at the same time (18:00 UTC).

In one month, there is Christmas.
We may do the meeting just before the German speaking very informal 
meeting each first Tuesday. This would allow people which are in both 
meetings (Paul, Csaba, myself) to block only one evening per month.

The next meeting is Thuesday, 7th of January 2025 at 18:00 UTC.

The German meeting may start at 19:00 UTC (20:00 Central European Time).

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Thank you all ! You guys rock !
Take care,
Harald