Well, I have been doing some programming in tcl and after recognizing that my second edition book is rather old, I acquired Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 4th Edition. In there, within the chapter about Namespaces, they talk about Object Systems and mentioned [incr Tcl] and XOTcl; the latter one as a more recent development.
So, I went ahead and checked out http://www.tcl.tk/man/itcl3.1/index.html and http://media.wu-wien.ac.at/doc/tutorial.html
Granted, I am not experienced in objects, although a couple of years ago I went back to a local community college for a nice Java course where I learned about OO and concepts like Inheritance and Encapsulation. So, needless to say, I was able to understand itcl right away and I am having the hardest time understanding xotcl.
So, I gather that xotcl seems more versatil (and hence more powerfull?)...is [incr tcl] good enough? [incr tcl] seems easy (to me, with my Java knowledge) to grasp and program. How does xotcl compare?
I'm just having a hard time separating Objects and Classes, each with its own definitions and methods, etc. By the way, the soccer team example did not include anything on Objects, everything was Classes...so, I was up for a surprise when they started to talk about Objects in the same way they did about Classes. The following statements hit the nail right on the head for me:
"This is possible (and not senseless) because of the per-object specialization ability and the dual shape of a class, which is at the same time object and class. Both lead to a seamless connection of the run-time properties (the object features) and their descriptive properties (the class features). It is possible to avoid the strict distinction between them, known from static typed languages, like C++, Java, etc."
Needless to say, I am having a hard time with the first sentence from the quotation above.
The xotcl toturial is 67 pages long, is it standalone or do I require to know otcl before taking on xotcl? Are there learning alternatives for xotcl other than the tutorial mentioned above? Are 67 pages enough? The book "[incr tcl/tk] from the Ground Up" is over 700 pages long!
Any advice? Do you get a lot of questions like these from newbies? Or am I speaking to the wrong crowd i.e., you all love xotcl and think is easy to understand?
Thanks for any tips.
G.Salazar