TCL and Related Speech Server questions

["T. V. Raman" <tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good question.  The choice of TCL  is mostly historical:  in
1995, there were three languages that were approximately equal in
popularity, perl, python and tcl.

TCL  had one advantage over perl and python; in 1995, it was a
lot easier to bind TCL  to a native C library -- and I needed
that to integrate support for the software DecTalk.

2. In 1995, TCL and Python had an advantage over perl -- and this
is still true -- both languages trivially expose a
read-eval-print loop -- so you  can essentially write a server script in
those languages where each  server command is just a function,
and the client e.g. emacspeak, can launch the script  and write
to stdin (or later over a socket) to send commands to the server.

Fast Forward to 2013:

If I started fresh today, I would probably write it in Python --
given that TCL  development has slowed down.  That said, TCL is
still a good option because it is well supported in general.

Note that because of the initial servers having been written in
TCL, emacspeak writes to the server assuming it's talking to TCL,
so the python or Java server script has to do a bit more work.

If you want to study this further, look in module dtk-interp.el
--- if it ever becomes necessary, one could write an alternative
implementation of that module that makes it slightly easier on a
python server 

Haden Pike writes:
 > Hi all,
 > 
 > I got into a discussion about Emacs and Emacspeak with a sighted 
 > classmate who saw me using AucTeX to read my Calculus assignment. She 
 > asked me later why the speech servers use TCL.  I didn't know and my 
 > best guess was that it was the best option at the time.  Is this the 
 > case, or are there advantages I'm not aware of?
 > 
 > Thinking about it later, I was curious if TCL should still be used when 
 > writing a new speech server, or whether something like the mac server 
 > should be written where possible?
 > Haden
 > 
 > 
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