Tcl/Tk originated with
Dr. John Ousterhout (pronounced
"Oh'-stir-howt") while teaching at University of California, Berkeley, Califor
nia.
He actually started implementing it when he got back to Berkeley in the spring
of 1988; by summer of that year it was in use in some internal applications,
but there was no Tk. Read about the history of Tcl/Tk directly from its author
's
words at
www.scripti cs.com/scripting/tclHistory.html.
1989: The first external releases of Tcl and beginning of Tk imp
lemention;
1991: First release of Tk;
1994: Dr. Ousterhout was hired by Sun Microsystems, Inc.: he was
a Distinguished
Engineer and led the Tcl project.
April/May 1997: the Sun research group responsible for Tcl devel
opment
were spun off into a Sun business group called SunScript. However, things chan
ged
again soon afterwards. You can read more about that evolution selecting "SunSc
ript_story"
at URL:
Su nScript-Story .
August 1997: a Tcl Consortium was formed.
February 1998: Dr. Ousterhout left Sun to create
Scriptics, a company dedicated
to scripting tools, applications, and services. According to
www.scriptics.com /about/news/qa.html,
core Tcl and Tk remain free, with the team at Sun continuing work right now
on Tcl/Tk 8.1. After the next release, the intention is that work on the core
will migrate from Sun to Scriptics, with the Sun team will focus more on Tcl
extensions and applications.
April 23, 1998: the Association for Computing Machinery
ACM awarded the 1997 Software System
Award to John Ousterhout and Scriptics (
www.acm.org/awards/). This award
is given to an institution or individual recognized for developing a software
system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concept
s,
in commercial acceptance, or both.
