6th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference Technical Sessions

[Wednesday, September 16]  [Thursday, September 17]  [Friday, September 18]

Technical Sessions   Friday, September 18

9:00 am - 9:45 am Invited Talk
Yacc Meets Tk?
Steve Johnson, Transmeta Corporation
Modern GUI's are typically written quickly using some kind of GUI builder, then very painfully attached to an application and even more painfully edited as the application evolves. Yacc has been very effective for avoiding this 'after design' in text-based tools. It would be attractive if we could bring similar benefits to GUI construction. GUIs carry out the same role as the parser--accepting and validating the user's input. This analogy suggests that we might build Yacc-like tools to help build industrial strength GUIs (dozens of screens, and a half-dozen or so different user classes). We will speculate about what tools would be useful, how they would work, and how to build them.
Steve Johnson spent nearly 20 years at Bell Labs, where he wrote Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. For the past decade he has consulted and worked at a number of Silicon Valley startups. He served on the USENIX board for ten years, four of those as president, and is now the USENIX representative to the Computing Research Association.

9:45 am - 10:45 am Language Issues
Session Chair: Dave Beazley, University of Utah
Using Content-Derived Names for Package Management in Tcl
Ethan L. Miller, Kennedy Akala, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth, University of Maryland
Using Tcl to Rapidly Develop a Scalable Engine for Processing Dynamic Application Logic
Greg Barish, Healtheon Corporation
Using Tcl to Script CORBA Interactions in a Distributed System
Michael L. Miller, Advanced Micro Devices, Srikumar Kareti, Honeywell Technology Center

10:45 am - 11:00 am Break

11:00 am - 12:00 pm Panel & Best Poster Award
Tcl in the Bazaar - A United Front
Moderator: Michael McLennan, Bell Labs Innovations for Lucent Technologies
Panelists: Mark Harrison, AsiaInfo Computer Networks, Beijing; Peter Salus, The Tcl/Tk Consortium; Brent Welch, Scriptics Corp.
The publication of Eric Raymond's The Cathederal and the Bazaar has electrified the free software community and given more visibility to "open source" software than ever before. Free software enthusiasts everywhere are rethinking their strategies and coming up with innovative new plans to colonize the corporate landscape newly opened to them. This panel will discuss ways that the Tcl community might harness the power of the "bazaar" to move development forward.

12:00 pm - 12:30 pm Closing Remarks and Town Meeting

[Wednesday, September 16]  [Thursday, September 17]  [Friday, September 18]


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Technical Sessions Friday, September 18
[Wednesday, September 16] [Thursday, September 17] [Friday, September 18]

9:00 am - 9:45 am	Invited Talk Yacc Meets Tk? Steve Johnson, Transmeta Corporation Modern GUI's are typically written quickly using some kind of GUI builder, then very painfully attached to an application and even more painfully edited as the application evolves. Yacc has been very effective for avoiding this 'after design' in text-based tools. It would be attractive if we could bring similar benefits to GUI construction. GUIs carry out the same role as the parser--accepting and validating the user's input. This analogy suggests that we might build Yacc-like tools to help build industrial strength GUIs (dozens of screens, and a half-dozen or so different user classes). We will speculate about what tools would be useful, how they would work, and how to build them. Steve Johnson spent nearly 20 years at Bell Labs, where he wrote Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. For the past decade he has consulted and worked at a number of Silicon Valley startups. He served on the USENIX board for ten years, four of those as president, and is now the USENIX representative to the Computing Research Association.

9:45 am - 10:45 am	Language Issues Session Chair: Dave Beazley, University of Utah Using Content-Derived Names for Package Management in Tcl Ethan L. Miller, Kennedy Akala, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth, University of Maryland Using Tcl to Rapidly Develop a Scalable Engine for Processing Dynamic Application Logic Greg Barish, Healtheon Corporation Using Tcl to Script CORBA Interactions in a Distributed System Michael L. Miller, Advanced Micro Devices, Srikumar Kareti, Honeywell Technology Center

10:45 am - 11:00 am	Break

11:00 am - 12:00 pm	Panel & Best Poster Award Tcl in the Bazaar - A United Front Moderator: Michael McLennan, Bell Labs Innovations for Lucent Technologies Panelists: Mark Harrison, AsiaInfo Computer Networks, Beijing; Peter Salus, The Tcl/Tk Consortium; Brent Welch, Scriptics Corp. The publication of Eric Raymond's The Cathederal and the Bazaar has electrified the free software community and given more visibility to "open source" software than ever before. Free software enthusiasts everywhere are rethinking their strategies and coming up with innovative new plans to colonize the corporate landscape newly opened to them. This panel will discuss ways that the Tcl community might harness the power of the "bazaar" to move development forward.

12:00 pm - 12:30 pm	Closing Remarks and Town Meeting