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From: twpierce@quads.uchicago.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: extensibility (was: Why you should not use Tcl)
Message-ID: <1994Sep29.201645.10765@midway.uchicago.edu>
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References: <9409232314.AA29957@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <364bq2$mjd@topaz.sensor.com> <36a5ri$kko@agate.berkeley.edu> <36bje9$h3c@topaz.sensor.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 20:16:45 GMT
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I've set followups to gnu.misc.discuss.

In article <36bje9$h3c@topaz.sensor.com>,
Ron Natalie <ron@topaz.sensor.com> wrote:

>Gnu EMACS has implemented for it a news reader and a WWW browser
>for example.  It does neither one particularly well.  There's
>a difference between providing an extension mechanism and providing
>a complete general purpose software development environment.

Rms's point is that when you provide an extension mechanism
for your application, there will invariably be users who are
not satisfied with merely extending or modifying the
original application slightly, but writing large subprograms
that are applications in themselves.  The existence of GNUS
and Emacs-W3, neither authored by Free Software Foundation
employees, is a testament to that fact.  Providing a
scripting language that is ill-suited to such a goal won't
really dissuade these people; in some cases it'll actually
encourage them, and the only difference in the results is
that now you have large, clumsy, poorly-designed application
extensions rather than large, reasonably sleek or
well-integrated application extensions.

>Why do I need to put an entire lisp implementation when all the user
>wants to do is iterate a process over several steps or rearrange the
>menus a bit.

What if that's not all your users want to do?
What if that's all your users want to do, but in order to do
so they must dip briefly into slightly more sophisticated
and abstract concepts than a small scripting language is
prepared to offer?

I agree that there are circumstances where Tcl will be
sufficient for whatever application needs may arise; I'm
just arguing that they're relatively few and far between,
and will mostly occur in closed environments.

-- 
"A person who dies of lung cancer at age 70 will not be hospitalized later
with another disease," said a study released Thursday by [Canada's] Imperial
Tobacco touting the benefits of early death in smokers on the health-care
system.  (Reuters, in the Chicago _Tribune_, 9/3/94)
