Version 7 of Tcl is (not) almost dead

Siqsuruq 2017-9-8: Hello everyone, before I start talking trash about Tcl let me say few words. I love this language, I really do ... I have been using it since 2005. I have TDK License. I have learned a lot from this wiki. All my code is written in Tcl/Tk.

But now I feel like Tcl is almost dead. And this makes me really sad.

ActiveState has no more support for TDK. There is no more centralized repositories for Tcl packages, no more teacup no more teapot. When I try to tell people about Tcl they look at me like I'm crazy person. First impression about programming language is always a web page about it, and this is this wiki.This wiki is really really ugly.

Tcl is almost dead because of marketing, support and availability.

Can we just join all together and fix it?

There is web designers here? Designers to give this wiki some shine? What I need to do to create centralized repository for Tcl packages? I have small virtual server I can sucrifice for this cause. I want everybody be able to upload their packages on it.

I dont know about you guys, may be you all are brainiacs here. And like all brainiacs you dont care about image of the language, but I think its important. And we all need to do something about it.

bll 2017-9-8 Google Trends. I don't know how accurate this is, but it doesn't look good.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F07fw2 (Tcl programming language)

Not totally dead, this is a good sign...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Tkinter (tkinter)

Another source (stackoverflow, tcl and tkinter tags):

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=tcl%2Ctkinter

You will find that there are a large group of people who have no interest in changing the wiki. They spout phrases like "spirit of the wiki", which if I translate correctly means "do it my way". It would actually be easier to start a new wiki, but you will need to collect a group of people who are willing to contribute to it -- this is difficult, as many people don't want to keep two different wiki's up to date. Fragmentation isn't good, but fighting these these high-inertia people seems worse in this case.

A repository of Tcl packages would be great, but first I think a more standardized way of installing would be useful. e.g. Python (which I know nothing about) has a set of directories that are searched for modules, and their 'easyinstall' and 'pip' programs install into these directories. If the Tcl modules could be installed in this manner, this would be much easier. I think, right now, if I installed a few Tcl modules to use on Linux, I would probably have to add several different paths to ::auto_path. This is not portable nor very manageable.

Once this module/package tree/system is in place, then the major modules can be repackaged to install into the standard directories, and a repository/installation system can be built.

I also have a server available that can be used for wiki/forum/repository, whatever Tcl/Tk related.

EMJ 2017-09-08:

Google Trends - Try adding Perl for comparison, its way higher than Tcl, but declining a lot faster. Try adding Python and it doesn't seem to know it's a language, so the snakes and Monty are obviously mucking up the figures. On the whole, I don't think it's clear enough how the figures are worked out.
Stack Overflow - I think this says more about the type of people who use it and how it is run. Too many wrong but "accepted" answers (and no way to fix them), and too many incomplete answers.
The Wiki - is not the primary web page, that is www.tcl.tk . As for "do it my way", I think it has mostly been "this is why I don't like your way", the result of which should be (but sadly often isn't) a reasonable discussion.
Repository - yes, but what we have seen with ActiveState is both the risk of changing commercial focus and the result of the loss of specific people. Providing a physical resource to run a repositry is less than half the battle.
Package/Module Installation standards - They exist actually - install Tcllib or tdom as they instruct and you don't need to change auto_path. However there are several reasons why people don't set their packages up for this.