[MACTCL] Final report on Tk-Cocoa 2.0

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

Hello all,

With a lot of testing from Linus Nyberg, Russell Owen, Torsten Reincke, 
and Marc Culler, and a good deal of code assistance from Marc, I've been 
able to do some smoothing out of some final rough edges with the major 
implementation changes of Tk-Cocoa, and I think it's time to declare 
that project complete.

After I announced the initial commits a few weeks ago, these folks 
invested a lot of time building, working with, and providing me feedback 
on the changes, and the issues revolved around a couple common issues:

1. The button metrics were a bit off--buttons were too large, too much 
padding, and so on.
2. My effort to address flicker during window resizing caused a lot of 
disruption, both to user expectations (the window resize was not 
displayed, by design) and stability (it crashed a lot).

After some additional work on my part, more user feedback, and some 
helpful patches, recent commits have achieved the following:

1. Button metrics now work as expected.
2. We've put live resizing back in, to make sure Tk remains consistent 
with user expectations, and still managed to eliminate the worst of the 
flicker that was evident when I first removed the private API's, without 
crashes.

There may still be a few loose ends (Torsten reported a minor UI glitch 
with scrollbars that does not impede functionality, and there is some 
subtle flicker at times during window resizing), but it's my view that 
Tk-Cocoa is now as stable and performant as it was before the private 
API's were removed, if not more so, and it achieves this outcome while 
remaining consistent with user expectations for window display and app 
performance--in short, Tk-Cocoa remains a good citizen on OS X. 
Additionally, a very good side effect of the improvements in drawing 
performance and stability is that the underlying issues with event loop 
integration seem reduced. That core issue has not been solved and may 
never be, but the simplifying of drawing and event processing seems to 
have relieved a good deal of pressure on the overall event loop, which 
is no small improvement.

I think the new Tk-Cocoa is ready for a stable release in both 8.6 and 
8.5, and users should see significant improvements once that happens.

Thanks to all for their input, assistance, and encouragement.

Best,
Kevin

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