Erick Gallesio writes:
> The next release of STk (which will be called STklos by the way, since
> it is a completely different program) will be faster than actual STk (something
> like 4x and 5x, sometimes more). Perhaps you will not have anymore to
> use sockets for your program (this is particularly important that I'm
> not sure to have support for sockets in the first STklos release :-).
> I hope to be able to distribute a first release before the end of this
> millennium.
This is very good news indeed. It would be nice to hear more about
the new release. What is its relationship to Biglook? Will it have a
newer version of Tk? Some of the recent Tcl/Tk releases have some
good stuff worth having, like Unicode in Tk 8.1.
I, too, have been very happy with STk. Right now I'm planning to
build a database front end to serve as a tool for people who use
interactive theorem provers. I'm looking at STk to implement it.
Recently I found the pgstk package, which provides an interface to the
Postgres family of database servers. It looks helpful, but it hasn't
been updated in a few years. Raymond Toy, the pgstk developer,
doesn't have an updated version. If any of you out there has been
using pgstk or something similar, I'd be interested in hearing about
your experiences, especially how well it works with recent versions of
PostgreSQL and STk.
I have to say, though, I'm also looking at Python to do this job.
Although I really like Scheme and will continue to use it, I find
Python to be a good language as well. It's much better than Perl or
Tcl, which aren't even worth considering. Python and its Tk interface
(Tkinter) offer a capability similar to STk, including the OO
features. But if Erick gives us STklos at five times the speed, that
would be a big step forward.
Another project I'm pursuing with STk is further along, but it's
something I'm doing at home, so progress is slow. I have to share
two PCs with the rest of my family. It's like being back in college
when I had to do all my computing after midnight. The project is a
2D technical drawing tool designed to be highly programmable. I hope
to release it as an open source package. It won't be ready in this
millennium, but shortly after the next one begins.
Ben
---
Ben Di Vito b.l.divito_at_larc.nasa.gov
1 South Wright Street, MS 130 http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/~bld
NASA Langley Research Center voice: +1-757-864-4883
Hampton, VA 23681 USA fax: +1-757-864-4234
Received on Thu Nov 30 2000 - 15:27:53 CET