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To: Peter da Silva <peter@bonkers.taronga.com>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Any reason we can't enable the bus mouse by default? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 21 Aug 1995 06:12:25 CDT."
             <199508211112.GAA08341@bonkers.taronga.com> 
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 05:13:12 -0700
Message-ID: <7640.809007192@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

> Ctk doesn't have the PC-character-graphics flash of the install tools,
> but you can't just take a tk script and expect it to look good on ctk.
> The idea isn't to be able to run Tk on a terminal, but to run ctk on X.

Yes, I do understand that.  The problem is, I don't *want* to run ctk
on X!  I don't want to run anything with such a convoluted API
regardless of how many underlying imaging models it supports.  It's
just Too Evil(tm).

> No, the last thing we need is yet another incompatible X extension to
> Tcl (there only what, four of them now?). What we need is to work on
> the bindings of ctk (which are obscure at best)...

I don't think it's possible to save Ctk.  I mean, I hate to sound so
opinionated here but I have used toolkits that tried to take a very
abstract view of the underlying imaging model, be they DOS graphics to
Windows to the Macintosh, and many of them have been quite reasonable
in the level of abstraction they provided.  That's the key, you see.
To provide abstraction above ALL the desired types of imaging models,
not to pick one highly specific one and then warp all the others to
fit it.  What you wind up with then is something that reminds one more
of a crippled stork beating one wing than anything else, and it's not
much fun to program in.

I'm sorry, but everything I've seen with Ctk so far has done little
more than make me want to run in the other direction..  Perhaps
they'll manage to hit the sweet spot between Tk and curses somehow,
but I rather doubt it.  Again, they took what was a fundamentally
flawed approach, IMHO, and they won't overcome that very easily.

I hate to propose Yet Another Standard for TCL, but it's not like
Ousterhout ever started Tk with the intention of running it anywhere
but under X.  Maybe now that he's at Sun he'll focus on evolving
something more cross-platform in scope and approach, but I suspect
that if he does, it won't look a lot like Tk.

					Jordan