6 ms·

AndroWish: Tcl/Tk on Android

35 points by networked 12y ago

amelius 12y ago
John Ousterhout is a professor who really did some amazing programming back in the 90s! Can't think of many people coming close in terms of productivity.
- easytiger 12y ago
  INteresting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy Ousterhout's dichotomy is computer scientist John Ousterhout's claim[1] that high-level programming languages tend to fall into two groups, each with distinct properties and uses: system programming languages and scripting languages
- lsb 12y ago
  Recently, he and a grad student at Stanford came up with the most exciting consensus protocol people have seen in a decade or more, Raft.
davidw 12y ago
I made Hecl work on Android, but it has kind of languished, unfortunately: http://www.hecl.org/ http://www.hecl.org/
72deluxe 12y ago
Nice to see Fossil SCM being used as the website host. Thanks SQLite creator!
- bch 12y ago
  ...and former TCT (Tcl Core Team) member. (This is drh (Richard Hipp) for those that don't know off the top of their head who the principal of SQLite is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp)
zerr 12y ago
It is somewhat confusing whether this is a wishlist or done-list :)
- sigzero 12y ago
  You are probably joking but...wish it the "gui" executable for Tcl.
lnanek2 12y ago
Kind of sad the UI wasn't fixed. TCL/TK looked old and archaic a decade ago on desktop machines, and still looks really bad here: http://www.androwish.org/index.html/wiki?name=Example+Scripts http://www.androwish.org/index.html/wiki?name=Example+Script... It is old Sun technology that Sun abandoned to work only on Java and if you are familiar with how bad and ugly the original Java UIs were (AWT, Applets, etc.) you already know what it looks like. To match modern Android UIs they have to rip out a lot of chrome and needless borders and decoration and make the whole thing a lot cleaner, then redo everything to try to follow a consistent design grid of touchable items. Android designs follow a 48dp grid (dp being a pixel that scales with screen density) to keep things consistent and the right size to touch. In the screenshots above you often see things like inconsistent spacing and tiny microscopic checkboxes (which are not even consistent checkboxes with the rest of Android so increase user friction).
- oblio 12y ago
  They did fix the tech with TTK/Tile. The thing is, the default themes for it are decent, but they're still far from what Qt does. And even Qt isn't perfect. Here's how things look with Tile: http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ (click Screenshots on the left).
  - bachmeier 12y ago
    "the default themes for it are decent" Not on Linux. One of the long-time criticisms of Tcl was its Windows-centric development.
  - luckydude 12y ago
    This: http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/gui/gui.html http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/gui/gui.html is done with Tk. It's possible to make it look semi decent and not that hard. We should have picked some better fonts.
- abuzzooz 12y ago
  > It is old Sun technology that Sun abandoned to work only on Java Not exactly true. Tcl/Tk was not invented at Sun, although Sun did fund its development for a few years by employing its author John Ousterhout. But, I agree with you that the UI look is outdated, and needs some touching up. Every time this issue is brought up, the Tcl folks point to the "new" theming capabilities that were added in v8.5 (or perhaps v8.4?). I haven't looked at theming in Tcl to make an opinion.
hardwaresofton 12y ago
I realize I am raining on the parade a little bit but, As a person who has worked with TCL, I would hate to see it anywhere other than where I have run into it before (IC design). It is an almost-lisp that has way too many idiosyncrasies and bad quirks.
- luckydude 12y ago
  Yeah, agreed, and we still use it so we made a little C like language that compiles to tcl byte codes. Makes coding there far far more pleasant (for me at least). http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/L/L.html http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/L/L.html
  - hardwaresofton 12y ago
    Excuse me for asking, but are you doing IC? If not, what is tying you to TCL? legacy software? Also, why not just interface away from TCL? I'm trying not to be too negative on TCL, but it's just not worth the trouble. Now, if someone built a lisp on top of tcl, I might use it, but things like having a { in the comments or spacing out opening {s for a loop is a ridiculous problem for a parser to fall down on (with a non-intuitive error message to boot). Also, you guys are throwing away the good (lispy) parts of tcl by having a C like language (the syntactic consistency, meta-programming by creating variables dynamically,etc)... Also, I bet people have to do some "training" to get up to speed on which parts of the C-like language are which, which generally leads to Not to sound arrogant, but if I was working with you guys, my first 20% time project would be to convert whatever it was that was tying us to TCL to something else, unless it was super duper impossible (like it was in IC). It's just a productivity killer, in my experience.
    - cnvogel 12y ago
      In ASIC design (that's what the commenter probably refers to when mentioning IC), just like in the more widespread FPGA world: many of the proprietary expensive tools are exposing their functionality as aTCL scripting engine. While the graphical tools hide this to some extent, as soon as you go for automation, which is unavoidable for complex work, you'll find yourself to write scripts in the TCL language.
lafar6502 12y ago
Fossil.. it deserves more attention than it has now. Maybe Git is more powerful, but Fossil is a pearl of software engineering

35 points by networked 12y ago

John Ousterhout is a professor who really did some amazing programming back in the 90s! Can't think of many people coming close in terms of productivity.

easytiger 12y ago
INteresting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy Ousterhout's dichotomy is computer scientist John Ousterhout's claim[1] that high-level programming languages tend to fall into two groups, each with distinct properties and uses: system programming languages and scripting languages
lsb 12y ago
Recently, he and a grad student at Stanford came up with the most exciting consensus protocol people have seen in a decade or more, Raft.

davidw 12y ago

I made Hecl work on Android, but it has kind of languished, unfortunately: http://www.hecl.org/ http://www.hecl.org/

72deluxe 12y ago

Nice to see Fossil SCM being used as the website host. Thanks SQLite creator!

bch 12y ago
...and former TCT (Tcl Core Team) member. (This is drh (Richard Hipp) for those that don't know off the top of their head who the principal of SQLite is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp)

zerr 12y ago

It is somewhat confusing whether this is a wishlist or done-list :)

sigzero 12y ago
You are probably joking but...wish it the "gui" executable for Tcl.

lnanek2 12y ago

Kind of sad the UI wasn't fixed. TCL/TK looked old and archaic a decade ago on desktop machines, and still looks really bad here: http://www.androwish.org/index.html/wiki?name=Example+Scripts http://www.androwish.org/index.html/wiki?name=Example+Script... It is old Sun technology that Sun abandoned to work only on Java and if you are familiar with how bad and ugly the original Java UIs were (AWT, Applets, etc.) you already know what it looks like. To match modern Android UIs they have to rip out a lot of chrome and needless borders and decoration and make the whole thing a lot cleaner, then redo everything to try to follow a consistent design grid of touchable items. Android designs follow a 48dp grid (dp being a pixel that scales with screen density) to keep things consistent and the right size to touch. In the screenshots above you often see things like inconsistent spacing and tiny microscopic checkboxes (which are not even consistent checkboxes with the rest of Android so increase user friction).

oblio 12y ago
They did fix the tech with TTK/Tile. The thing is, the default themes for it are decent, but they're still far from what Qt does. And even Qt isn't perfect. Here's how things look with Tile: http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ (click Screenshots on the left).
- bachmeier 12y ago
  "the default themes for it are decent" Not on Linux. One of the long-time criticisms of Tcl was its Windows-centric development.
- luckydude 12y ago
  This: http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/gui/gui.html http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/gui/gui.html is done with Tk. It's possible to make it look semi decent and not that hard. We should have picked some better fonts.
abuzzooz 12y ago
> It is old Sun technology that Sun abandoned to work only on Java Not exactly true. Tcl/Tk was not invented at Sun, although Sun did fund its development for a few years by employing its author John Ousterhout. But, I agree with you that the UI look is outdated, and needs some touching up. Every time this issue is brought up, the Tcl folks point to the "new" theming capabilities that were added in v8.5 (or perhaps v8.4?). I haven't looked at theming in Tcl to make an opinion.

hardwaresofton 12y ago

I realize I am raining on the parade a little bit but, As a person who has worked with TCL, I would hate to see it anywhere other than where I have run into it before (IC design). It is an almost-lisp that has way too many idiosyncrasies and bad quirks.

luckydude 12y ago
Yeah, agreed, and we still use it so we made a little C like language that compiles to tcl byte codes. Makes coding there far far more pleasant (for me at least). http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/L/L.html http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/L/L.html
- hardwaresofton 12y ago
  Excuse me for asking, but are you doing IC? If not, what is tying you to TCL? legacy software? Also, why not just interface away from TCL? I'm trying not to be too negative on TCL, but it's just not worth the trouble. Now, if someone built a lisp on top of tcl, I might use it, but things like having a { in the comments or spacing out opening {s for a loop is a ridiculous problem for a parser to fall down on (with a non-intuitive error message to boot). Also, you guys are throwing away the good (lispy) parts of tcl by having a C like language (the syntactic consistency, meta-programming by creating variables dynamically,etc)... Also, I bet people have to do some "training" to get up to speed on which parts of the C-like language are which, which generally leads to Not to sound arrogant, but if I was working with you guys, my first 20% time project would be to convert whatever it was that was tying us to TCL to something else, unless it was super duper impossible (like it was in IC). It's just a productivity killer, in my experience.
  - cnvogel 12y ago
    In ASIC design (that's what the commenter probably refers to when mentioning IC), just like in the more widespread FPGA world: many of the proprietary expensive tools are exposing their functionality as aTCL scripting engine. While the graphical tools hide this to some extent, as soon as you go for automation, which is unavoidable for complex work, you'll find yourself to write scripts in the TCL language.

lafar6502 12y ago

Fossil.. it deserves more attention than it has now. Maybe Git is more powerful, but Fossil is a pearl of software engineering