Guile with Tk

From: Tom Lord <lord_at_cygnus.com>
Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 22:17:04 -0700

Hi.

Guile is a generic extension language library for the GNU project.
It is centered around the language Scheme. The implementation is
derived from Aubrey Jaffer's interpreter "SCM".

There is a new snapshot of Guile and some related sources. This
snapshot is only available from:

        ftp.cygnus.com:pub/lord/guile-ii.tar.gz

This snapshot fixes those bugs that were reported for the previous
snapshot. This release has been tested on an intel Linux machine, on
an SGI Irix machine, and on a SunOS machine; your milage may vary.

This snapshot may be interesting to Stk users because it contains the
program "Gwish" -- an stk-inspired Tk interface for Scheme. Is there
anyone who would like to volunteer to make a CLOS or STKlos style
object system for Guile? Is there anyone who would like to work on
making Guile/Tk completely compatible with Stk?

Bugs in this release should be reported to "lord_at_cygnus.com".

Special thanks to Gary Houston for implementing many of the shell
features in this release.

This snapshot includes some new features. Among these are:

        o More Documentation

           The manual has expanded and now includes a section on
           the internals of the interpreter.


        o Tcl/Tk support

           You can link with a (slightly) modified libtcl and libtk
           either to make Tcl programs extensible in Scheme, or to
           write user interfaces in Scheme using the Tk widget set.
           It means that you can use any Tcl command module from
           Scheme, almost always without modification.

          
        o A demo: Gwish

          Gwish is a wish-like application that demonstrates the new
          Tcl/Tk support. Included is a Scheme version of a simple
          graph editor originally written in Tcl, and an autokad system.

          Gwish is based on STk and demonstrates the new capability
           of using anonymous Scheme procedures for bindings and widget
          callbacks.

          
        o System Calls

          The system call interface is now reasonably complete.
          Guile has enough raw materials to support a full implementation
           of Scsh, if volunteers want to work on one.

          
        o Gscsh

          The beginning of an scsh-like library for Guile.
          

        o Another demo: The Ctax Interpreter

          The beginning of a C-like syntax for Scheme.


        o Java-related tools

          This snapshot contains a variety of Java-related tools
          for hackers. The Scheme source can be found in the subdirectory
          "latte". The interpreter C source includes a byte-code interperter
          and a an efficient extensible object system called "structs".


Information about the Tcl/Tk support, system call interface, and gscsh
can be found in the info file "guile-ii/guile/scm.info". The demos
can be found in "guile-ii/guile/demos".

The snapshot consists of a number of directories. These are:


        guile-ii/ # the directory containing this file
        guile-ii/rx # the rx pattern matcher
        guile-ii/guile # sources for libguile and guile
        guile-ii/demos # sources for libguile and guile
        guile-ii/gtcl # a slightly modified version of Tcl
        guile-ii/gtk # a slightly modified version of Tk
        guile-ii/slib # a slightly expanded version of
                           a popular Scheme library.
        guile-ii/latte # Some tools relating to the bytecode
                           interpreter and to the language Java.




Sources still needing to be merged:

* The very latest changes to SCM and scm.texi.
* A module system.
* An expect-like program using Guile's shell features.


Volunteers might want to work on:

* Porting TkWWW from Tcl to Scheme and from Tk3 to Tk4.
  (This task is high-priority for the GNU project!)
* Improving the Tk interface.
* Resolving the remaining differences between the SCM and
  Guile source trees.
  (This task is high-priority.)
* Elisp support.
* Documentation.
* The "ctax", c-like syntax.
* A Scheme->bytecodes compiler.
* A Scheme->C compiler.
* Ctax->bytecode and Ctax->C compilers.
* Guile support for Oleo.
* Guile support for other GNU tools.
* Supporting the Hungry Programmer's XWord project.
* Bindings for interesting libraries: PGP, GL, ...?
* Improved thread support. Concurrent GC.
* Convenient graphics abstractions.
* Convenient distributed programming abstractions.
* On-line documentation.
* A scripting language.
* A generic, table-driven event-loop.
* A faster widget library.

The most successful volunteers are those who:
        1. Will promptly fill out the necessary legal
           work for the FSF.
        2. Are able to pick a task, choose a good
           direction quickly, and be mostly self-directed.

If you are interested in working on a project, please contact
"lord_at_cygnus.com", explaining what you'd like to work on.
Received on Mon May 08 1995 - 07:18:39 CEST

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