Re: TkExtra, a comment

[Sven N. Thommesen]

At 11:25 AM 1/26/98 -0800, Marcus wrote:
>>>>>> "ST" == Sven N Thommesen <address@hidden> writes:
>
>ST> would it perhaps be
>ST> possible for the Hive to release something like 1.0.5(b) which is
>ST> identical to 1.0.5 except that it works with tcl/tk/blt 8.0 ? Then
>ST> users can experiment and move up to the very lates unix release at
>ST> their leisure, while being current with their Swarm.
>
>I wish I had the time to properly package this, but I made the
>patches to a heavily-modified version of the source tree, and I really
>need to keep working on Java things.  If you contact me directly, 
>I'd be happy to make an archive of the current state of things.
>

Well, in response to this and to the recent query from Irene re: java etc.
I'd like to opine as follows:

a) I'm absolutely certain that given the number of target platforms, there
*will* be a period during which users will have problems getting Java going
and getting Swarm going using the Java GUI stuff. Possibly fewer problems
than with tcl/tk/blt, but still.

Thus, tcl/tk/blt *must* be maintained in parallell with the Java version
for a period of time (a calendar year? an Internet year?), and during that
time any improvements made to the Java version must be propagated back to
tcl/tk/blt.

b) Since tcl/tk 8.0 are rather different from 7.6/4.2 (AFAIK), it would be
reasonable for the final tcl/tk-compatible version of Swarm to be based on
8.x of tcl/tk/blt.

c) Abandoning the tcl/tk/blt compatible version of Swarm should not happen
until all current users report success in getting the Java version going --
or at least, until all supported target platforms have been successfully
tackled by a user or two ...

[Now bring on the flames!]

--Sven


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