Cameron Laird's personal notes on object-oriented Tcl

• many engineers around the world use [incr Tcl];
• STOOOP has the advantage that it is written entirely in Tcl; [explain more]
• Tcl Object System exploits Tcl's simplicity to make a fully reflective language. Its version 2.1.1 supports aspect-oriented programming and a distributed programming model;
• "Tea tries to implement the 'look' of Java from a class definition perspective, yet still remain as syntactically consistent with Tcl/Tk as possible";
• EvoX (which has also been called Cpptcl) and Tclobj allow very simple connections between C++ objects and Tcl;
• Sterno is a simple pure Tcl object-based system; ClassyTcl;
• "Tclpp is a Tcl script-only extension to add object-oriented principles to Tcl";
• Researchers at the University of Essen have worked on OTcl and XOTcl;
• Tcl8.0 has new Object constructs. More on that, later; and
• MIT Object Tcl (sort of a CLOS for Tcl) and
• IXI Object Tcl are two implementations about which I currently know little.
• Chris Fugate has made a nice start with framesets.
• Smalltickle is a recent (late spring 1999) Smalltalk-inspired pure Tcl object-oriented extension.

Tcl is indeed not very well suited for use with C++; I would like to see something like a standard (i.e. part of tcl core distribution) base class for Tcl_Object's; but that seems out of scope, since the new trend for Tcl programming will be Java.

Larry Virden counts over a dozen other less widely-known but still interesting OO initiatives in the FAQ he maintains.