From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Mon Dec 11 13:19:54 2000
Subject: Re: The future of Octave
From: Przemek Klosowski <przemek at jazz dot ncnr dot nist dot gov>
To: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 13:20:51 -0500


   > I've been hesitant to pursue this option for three reasons.  
   > 
   >     1) The need to learn a second language for programming callbacks
   >     2) The overhead of installing and running a second large interpreter
   >     3) The ungainliness of tcl/tk
   > 

   Tcl is too slow, especially since everyone is obviously concerned about
   execution time.  I say we should use C++m which Octave can already
   dynamicly load.

Tcl would be indeed too slow if one wanted to use it for
computation---but I don't think this is being contemplated. I think a
better idea is to wrap up Tk widgets into octave wrappers; so instead
of Tcl loop running Tk widgets you'd run Octave loop. Tk widgets have
been stolen already, twice: by Python (TkInter) and Perl (PerlTk?), so
octave could do the same. Tcl/Tk is ugly only if abused, and I speak
from experience: I once needed matrices and matrix multiplication in
Tcl, and it was awful. However, GUI in Tcl/Tk tends to be brief and
flexible.



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