A new extension architecture for the TCL terminal control language is under discussion in the scripting language community. The TEA TCL Extension Architecture, currently in draft form, is intended to make it easier to develop and share extensions to the TCL language. The draft specification was discussed at a recent meeting of TCL developers hosted by Scriptics Inc of Mountain View, California.
Scriptics was formed last year by TCL author John Ousterhout, who left Sun Laboratories after getting impatient over Sun Microsystems Inc’s reluctance to turn TCL from research into a commercial product. The company has since won venture capital funding, and forged relationships with partners such as Cisco Systems Inc, America Online Inc, Motorola Inc, Newbridge Networks Ltd, Synopsis Corp and Vignette Inc.
The TEA draft will be amended to reflect input from the meeting, and the core TCL platform and TCLPro development tools will be updated to support the specifications. Sample extensions – performiing such functions as enabling object-oriented commands, database functions and advanced networking, will be posted on the Scriptics web site for open source programmers.
