Re: [MACTCL] even more newbie madness

[Steve L. <st...@di...>]

Jim Ingham wrote ...

>There are two ways to run Tk on OX X.  One is to install the XDarwin & 
>XFree bits, to get a working X11 server, and then to build (or get from 
>Fink) the X11 version of Tk.  This will give you a working port, but 
>the controls will look like X11 Tk, and of course the install is a bit 
>painful...
>
>The other is to get the (still somewhat experimental) Aqua port of the 
>Classic MacTk from Sourceforge, and play with that.  It works pretty 
>well, though there are still some bugs.  It is pretty straightforward 
>to install, and if you wanted to do a little more work, it is pretty 
>easy to make a stand-alone Wish App out of it using the 
>"@executable_path" trick to embed the Tcl & Tk frameworks in the app...

There's a third way (well, a variation on the XDarwin approach)

Get XDarwin, then the OroborOSX window manager from <http://
wrench.et.ic.ac.uk/adrian/software/oroborosx/>. OroborOSX integrates well
with Aqua and provides an Aqua-like look and feel (at least, for window
controls). Then grab the MacOSX version of TclKit from http://equi4.com/
tclkit. TclKit is a single file Tcl/Tk/IncrTcl/MetaKit executable - just
stick it in /usr/local/bin and you are away. 

An XDarwin based solution has its problems - the rendering speed could be
better and it doesn't provide the nice look of Aqua - but it does work
and is reasably complete. It also has the advantage that you can display
apps from other *nix hosts.

On the other hand AquaTk looks sweet and performs well - Jim and his
collaborators have done a great job - but, as he mentioned, it does have
its rough edges.

I use the XDarwin TclKit daily (for both local and remote access) on an
iBook 500Mhz G3 - whenever I'm away from my workstation. 

But, realistically, at this stage neither solution is entirely acceptable
for a non-technical user.

Steve

-- 

Steve Landers                     Scripting Design Studio
Digital Smarties                  st...@di...
Perth, Western Australia          www.digital-smarties.com