tcl-mac

[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

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

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

On 12/21/14 11:51 AM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> 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.
After taking a bit time to consider an approach to these bugs, I have 
decided to revisit the issues by adding to the ttk package (it currently 
lacks a scrollbar for OS X), and also by borrowing from the ttk approach 
for buttons, etc. This will reduce the amount of work relative to 
re-implementing the button and scrollbar code from scratch. When I have 
more to report and /or test, I will post here.

Wish me luck!

--Kevin

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

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

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

Kevin  Walzer wrote:
>
> After taking a bit time to consider an approach to these bugs, I have
> decided to revisit the issues by adding to the ttk package (it currently
> lacks a scrollbar for OS X), and also by borrowing from the ttk approach
> for buttons, etc. This will reduce the amount of work relative to
> re-implementing the button and scrollbar code from scratch. When I have
> more to report and /or test, I will post here.


Just a heads-up re: ttk::scrollbars on OSX:

There is an impedance mismatch between the way Tile wants to
implement scrollbars and the HITheme API.  The ttk::scrollbar
Tcl bindings expect scrollbars to be composed of multiple
elements, and use [$sb identify element] to determine what to
do on ButtonPress events &c.  HIThemeDrawTrack(), however,
wants to draw the entire scrollbar as a single unit.

Apple provided hit-test routines to determine what part of the
scrollbar is under a given point [*], but the Tile framework
never evolved a mechanism by which that information could
be queried and returned to scripts.

There were ways to work around this mismatch for sliders
and progress bars, but I never managed to get scrollbars
working; that's why ttk::scrollbar dispatches to tk::scrollbar
on OSX.


--Joe English

  jen...@fl...


[*] If I recall correctly.  It appears that all online documentation
related to the OSX Appearance Manger interface has gone into
the Memory Hole.

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

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

Hi Joe,

On 12/23/14 1:20 PM, Joe English wrote:
> There were ways to work around this mismatch for sliders
> and progress bars, but I never managed to get scrollbars
> working; that's why ttk::scrollbar dispatches to tk::scrollbar
> on OSX.
Thanks for the reminder here. I remember this being an issue back in the 
day, and the compromise (just map to the Tk scrollbar) was effective 
because visually it was already native.

After doing a bit more digging into HITheme, it's likely that I will 
borrow a lot of the ttk C-level code in reivsing the implementation of 
the Mac buttons, menubuttons and scrollbars. Visually HITheme is almost 
identical to the Cocoa widgets. However, I will be adapting this stuff 
to Tk's API, not ttk's. This means that the revised Tk widgets will 
still be as configurable as before, and will not respond to ttk:: commands.

Thanks,
Kevin

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

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

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

On 12/22/14 9:38 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
>> 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.
> After taking a bit time to consider an approach to these bugs, I have
> decided to revisit the issues by adding to the ttk package (it currently
> lacks a scrollbar for OS X), and also by borrowing from the ttk approach
> for buttons, etc. This will reduce the amount of work relative to
> re-implementing the button and scrollbar code from scratch. When I have
> more to report and /or test, I will post here.

And now, after a day of hacking, I've done a couple of commits to trunk 
and core-8-5-branch that implement the following Tk/Cocoa improvements:

1. The scrolling flicker issue appears to be gone. I've addressed this 
by implementing custom drawing of the scrollbar that mimics the standard 
Cocoa UI as closely as possible. I do not fully understand why this 
seems to fix the issue that Linus reports, as well as multiple other 
issues that I've observed with "ghosted" scrollbars, but all my tests 
show no issues. The new drawing is supported on 10.7 and above, when the 
new scrollbar style was introduced. I have not tested this on 10.6 and 
below, and do not plan to. Linus, please test the update and I'll close 
the bug if you confirm it works.

2. I've made substantial improvement in how the menubutton is rendered 
during window resizing, which was the basis of Russell's bug report. 
When the menubutton is in a mapped state the flicker is completely gone. 
When unmapped, alas, it still shows up as a "ghost" image, but  the 
flicker is somewhat reduced. I do not know how to resolve this, but I 
will take the substantial improvement here as a win. Russell, please 
test the update and I'll close the bug if you confirm it works.

3. As a happy side effect of the menubutton fix, window performance in 
general seems improved during resizing. I added a couple of method calls 
that defer some redrawing while the window is being resized, and that 
seems to smooth things out a good deal.

I think these fixes are sufficient for now. As you know, I had spent 
some time looking at the possibility of borrowing some of ttk's code in 
rendering buttons, menubuttons, and the like using the HITheme API, but 
integrating that with Cocoa is simply impractical or far more work than 
I wanted to take on. In any case, I think things are now on more solid 
ground after the removal of the private API's, and I'll continue to 
investigate incremental improvements as time and bug reports allow. And 
my earlier invitation to submit patches stands: some of the big 
improvements over the past year are things I could never have come up 
with on my own!

Enjoy these improvements as an early Christmas present.

Happy holidays,
Kevin

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

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

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

> On 24 Dec 2014, at 1:09 pm, Kevin Walzer <kw...@co...> wrote:
> 
> And now, after a day of hacking, I've done a couple of commits to trunk 
> and core-8-5-branch that implement the following Tk/Cocoa improvements:
...
> Enjoy these improvements as an early Christmas present.

Many thanks Kevin.  Your investment of time and energy is greatly appreciated.

Steve

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

[Will D. <wi...@wj...>]

On Dec 23, 2014, at 9:31 PM, Steve Landers <st...@Di...> wrote:

> 
>> On 24 Dec 2014, at 1:09 pm, Kevin Walzer <kw...@co...> wrote:
>> 
>> And now, after a day of hacking, I've done a couple of commits to trunk 
>> and core-8-5-branch that implement the following Tk/Cocoa improvements:
> ...
>> Enjoy these improvements as an early Christmas present.
> 
> Many thanks Kevin.  Your investment of time and energy is greatly appreciated.

+1

> 
> Steve
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: [MACTCL] [TCLCORE] Invitation to submit patches for Tk/Cocoa: I need help

[Andreas K. <and...@ac...>]

Fully agreed.

On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 11:07 PM, Will Duquette <wi...@wj...> wrote:
>
> On Dec 23, 2014, at 9:31 PM, Steve Landers <st...@Di...> wrote:
>
>>
>>> On 24 Dec 2014, at 1:09 pm, Kevin Walzer <kw...@co...> wrote:
>>>
>>> And now, after a day of hacking, I've done a couple of commits to trunk
>>> and core-8-5-branch that implement the following Tk/Cocoa improvements:
>> ...
>>> Enjoy these improvements as an early Christmas present.
>>
>> Many thanks Kevin.  Your investment of time and energy is greatly appreciated.
>
> +1
>
>>
>> Steve
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website,
>> sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your
>> hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought
>> leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a
>> look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tcl-mac mailing list
>> tc...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website,
> sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your
> hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought
> leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a
> look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net
> _______________________________________________
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