I could never have done all this by myself...
In 1994 I delivered a major online financial/admin database upgrade
on time and within budget, which I couldn't have done without Tcl.
I also couldn't have done it without the Tcl/Tk user community.
The same goes for all my more recent projects, which you can
find out all about by taking the tour.
So I'd like to say a few words of praise for the Tcl/Tk community in
general, and thank a few individuals in particular. The Tcl/Tk
folk often seem to me to represent the best of what the Internet
should mean: dedicated programmers of high ability, building
good code for the love of it, and offering it to the world for
free.
The calibre of the programmers I've corresponded with during my
4 years of intensive Tcl/Tk development, and their personal
qualities -- like patience, kindness, and persistence in fixing
bugs and answering incoherent newbie gripes -- have really
impressed me. Ousterhout wrote a good language, but it's
the quality of the community that makes it really exciting to
work in Tcl and Tk. IMHO.
Some of those who really helped and encouraged me:
- John Ousterhout
- Never too proud or busy to argue with a novice user about the proper
sizing of text widgets when using proportional fonts. I'm impressed.
- Mark Diekhans
- For some reason, willing to serve as guardian angel and hand-holder
when I built my first Tcl/Tk release; can't thank you enough, Mark. Also for
TclX, thanks to all its authors.
- Tom Poindexter
- sybtcl and oratcl author, not to mention tcl-my-fancy and tclrobots and
many other cool things. Without sybtcl and wisql,
and Tom's encouragement, my DB users would be sitting in front of Sybase
Data Workbench today -- fate almost worse than death.
- George Howlett
- Author of the BLT extension. I think the BLT graph widget qualifies
as Single Most Stunningly Cool Tk Widget On the Planet, so that makes
George a pretty hoopy frood, if you sass my meaning.
- Jeffrey Hobbs
- Author of the new version of the tkTable extension, a quantum leap
beyond the original release. Now you, too, can write your own version of
Excel in Tk! Jeff is now the official Core Czar and Tcl Ambassador
at Scriptics.
- Kevin Kenny
- tclXess author, who despite a new baby and many other considerations
was willing to put in hours helping me get the v7 version of his code working.
- Sam Shen
- Without tkinspect, I'd still be bug-hunting today --
I'd never have made any of my project deadlines. What a tool.
No one should write Tk apps without it.
- Paul Raines
- Author of tkmail, my mail tool of choice for the last few years and
a darned fine app. The mfv extension for tcl is excellent.
- John Ellson and Stephen North
- Author/maintainers of the "graphviz" suite, including 'dot' (digraph
generator) and 'tcldg' (a Tcl extension for digraph generation and
manipulation). You can't believe how cool this stuff is until you try
it.
- Brent Welch
- Author of (so far) the best book on Tcl/Tk programming. Mine is
falling apart, which tells you something: it doesn't live on the shelf.
I'm sure there are tens more people who exchanged helpful mail with me, and
though I can't remember all your names, thanks all round. Thanks to
you wisql sites for your bug reports and comments, especially.
This is a personal thank-you, with no technical info. If you are wondering
what an extension is, or what these extensions and tools really are,
go on back to the toplevel page, take the Tour,
and check out the Extensions list!