Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!cs.ed.ac.uk!cs.edinburgh.ac.uk!nick From: nick@cs.edinburgh.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: TCL or not Keywords: TCL Message-ID: <2189@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> Date: 19 Nov 90 17:24:28 GMT References: <1990Nov19.033226.28411@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: nnews@cs.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk Organization: Wavetables 'R' Us Lines: 38 In article <1990Nov19.033226.28411@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, dmmg1176@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (David M Marcovitz) writes: > My impression is that TCL will be very useful in the long-run, but the > startup time will be very long. TCL seems to be very complicated > (every subclass has to interact with so many other things). It seems > that writing a simple program is complicated, but writing a > complicated program will eventually be easier (than without TCL). I suggest you go for the TCL. There are quite a few "gotchas" involving it - for example, the way that certain classes get Deactivate() calls while they're being disposed of, and things like this. But then, the Mac is like that, and doing it without using the TCL would give you the same kinds of problems (only more so). Using the TCL also means that you can dispense with the bizarre behaviour of the Control Manager for a lot of things, and bypass the Dialog Manager for controls panels and the like (there are pros and cons to this). Oh, the TCL is rather slow compared to stuff written directly on the ToolBox (so it seems to me, but then I'm running MIDI Manager as well...). That's the price of convenience... > (2) Is there something I can do to get moving quickly with TCL? You could join the THINK C mailing list (think-c@ics.uci.edu). > (3) If I start writing a simple program without TCL, will I be able to > incorporate TCL into that program as I expand it? I would doubt it. I wrote one large (20000 line) program without the TCL, and decided to completely rewrite it using the TCL (mostly done now - about 10 weeks work). The data scoping and localisation was totally different. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ "You ain't seen nothing yet. I can take this floor out, too. No trouble."