[Xotcl] Interested in OO for tcl.

[Salazar, German P21322]

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
 
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