[MACTCL] Invitation to submit patches for Tk/Cocoa: I need help

[Kevin W. <kw...@co...>]

Hi all,

As I noted yesterday, I have run into a wall on trying to address bugs 
with the scrollbar in Tk-Cocoa, as reported here by Linus Nyberg:

https://sourceforge.net/p/tcl/mailman/message/33162978/

(Linus, by the way, can you please file a bug report at the tracker at 
http://core.tcl.tk/tk/reportlist? Thanks.)

I've also run into a similar wall on trying to address the menubutton 
widgets as reported by Russell Owen here:

http://core.tcl.tk/tk/tktview/7a325ad72cbb6e331fbae3f4116fe112bda698f4

I am now asking for help from the community in addressing these bugs.

I must be candid: most of the progress that we've made on improving 
Cocoa/Tk over the past few years, particularly in fixing the most 
serious bugs, is the result of patches submitted by developers attacking 
pain points specific to their work. I'm thinking of the language input 
patches submitted by Adrian Robert, the image processing and button 
patches submitted by Marc Culler, and others.

As the de-facto maintainer of Tk/Cocoa, I'm efficient at reviewing and 
applying patches, and occasionally I will go through and fix a bug on my 
own, or can diagnose a fix based on some specific reports. But in the 
majority of cases, I am not able to find solutions to the bug being 
reported. This is frustrating for me, and for you as well. But when 
developers who are smarter and better than me look at something 
specific, the result is often a very helpful patch that really fixes a 
big problem.

So, I'm asking: anyone who can investigate any of these bugs, please do 
so. I promise to review patches in a very timely fashion.

Here is a list of my open bugs at the tracker:

http://core.tcl.tk/tk/rptview?rn=16

I am grateful for any help anyone can provide. I do not believe I can 
make further significant progress on Tk/Cocoa by myself. I'm sorry about 
that, but my skillset is what it is.  I try to compensate for any of my 
own limitations by being responsive and efficient in reviewing 
contributions from others, because it makes no difference to me where 
the improvements come from: I just want the toolkit to get better. I 
know you agree. But this isn't going to happen if I am working by 
myself. I need more contributions from the community.

Thank you,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com