[ltk-user] ltk examples

[Ken Tilton]

On 11/22/06, Phil Armitage <philip.armitage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I also asked once about some problem on this list recently, and only Ken
> > answered.  His answer did not solve my problem, and I decided that other
> > things were more important to me at the moment.  I am somewhat
> astonished
> > that this list seems so abandoned by LTk developers and users.  Maybe
> you
> > could find more help at comp.lang.lisp?
>
> I think Ken's advice to Bernhard is the best bet. My selected-text
> issue posted last week was found by reversing out some code I'd
> written in TkInter (Python) a long while back which in turn was
> derived from the Tcl/Tk docs. It then became fairly obvious what Tcl
> code I needed to push from Lisp.
>
> (Obviously this is not always the most productive way to work...).


I don't know. To a certain extent, if library gateway-to-whatever works just
like "whatever", then we have a huge win: all the doc for whatever works for
gateway-to-whatever. Where "whatever" is a massive library, well, one
exactly wants the gateway to be transparent.

Remember, this is opensource, with no reward to the provider for the massive
eeffort first to conceive a gratuitous new API atop whatever, and then to
document it. Speaking of which...

elsewhere someone mavrelled at the apparent abandonment of LTk. I have no
insight on that, but I do know that the risk/reward on Lisp open source is
borderline. Possibly related?

I think the deal is this: a GUI-seeker has Cells-gtk, Celtk, CelloTk
(Celtk+Togl), and not much else to choose from if you are looking for open,
portable, serious widget sets. wxCL? That's an unknown to me. Opensource
works by people contributing, not complaining. Pick one and dive in.
/Possibly/ Cells-Gtk is the one that comes off the shelf most cleanly.



I'm sort of wondering if I should switch over to Cello/Cells/Gtk
> instead as people seem quite interested in it.


Really? I have seen one or two people wander thru Celtk, no more. LTk seems
to be far more popular, tho I must concede the recent Silence of the List is
disconcerting. Cello is really raw and unfinished. For the most complete
functionality CelloTk (a recent carve-out) gives you all of Tk and Togl for
OpenGL.


I only really picked
> Ltk as it loaded first time without any errors.


Never a bad thing. :)

In general the only
> real problem I'm having with CL since starting is getting libraries to
> work (although this is most likely incompetence on my part so don't
> read it as a complaint!).


No, not your fault, nor anyone's. It was agonizing porting one of my big C
apps between C compilers on the same platform. Research shows it is nine
times harder to deliver a portable library than to develop it fpr oneself.
Moral: do not  expect to find many cleanly portable libraries. The good news
is that just a little effort will be needed to get a library running on a
new system, because Lisp really is mostly portable. But, not knowing that,
it is easy to give up on a lib that does not build out of the box -- and I
have done so many a time.

kt
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