#2066 help menu entries block the application

[Randolf Schultz]

In my application, when certain entries from the
help menu are selected, the application stops,
displays the rainbow wheel and can only be killed.

I can make the menu entries work using "after idle"
for the menu command or by renaming the menu from
"help" to "myhelp" (in the latter case, I then have
of course two Help menus).
The menu entries that do not work simply call
a procedure that should fire up a web browser.
Other entries from the same menu, that e.g. only
pop up an About dialog, always work.

This bug does not show up with Tcl/Tk 8.4.7.

Application:
http://sf.net/projects/ayam

best regards,
Randolf,
--
http://www.ayam3d.org/ Ayam, where import means NURBS!

[Daniel A. Steffen]

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Randolf,
could you provide a small test script that shows the problem, that would make
debugging it much quicker for me

[Randolf Schultz]

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Unfortunately I cannot add such a script, as I cannot reproduce the problem
in pure Tcl. I tried hard, though. However, I found another way to toggle
the blocking problem. In the procedure, that is called by the menu entry,
one of the first commands is an own, written in C, that concatenates some
strings and writes them to the console again, using Tcl_Eval(<some script,
that contains a puts>);. I can toggle the blocking problem by commenting
the call to this command also. Looks like a timing issue to me, because
a) it is cureable with "after idle" and b) while in this self written command,
that seems to cause the block, the application does not process any events.

[Daniel A. Steffen]

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would it be possible to isolate a small example in tcl & C that shows the
problem, e.g. by putting the help menu code in question into a small C
extension ?

with the current information, I don't think I can help with this problem, I really
need to be able to debug the code that hangs...