[R-SIG-Mac] R commander fonts on R 3.4.0

[Fox, John]

Dear Peter,

First, thank you very much for persisting with this. I greatly appreciate it.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Dalgaard [mailto:pdalgd at gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2017 2:52 PM
> To: Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>
> Cc: Fox, John <jfox at mcmaster.ca>; r-sig-mac at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] R commander fonts on R 3.4.0
> 
> A few more data points:
> 
> I tried building Tcl/Tk 8.6.6 from the sources from sourceforge.
> Contrary to what it says on the package, it insists on building Tcl and
> Tk as frameworks, which in turn requires that R's configure needs
> special instructions. This works reasonably well for simple tcltk stuff
> (demos, the CRAN selection menu), but unfortunately, library(Rcmdr)
> causes an "Abort trap: 6" almost immediately. (I get a sense of deja vu
> about this... Did Brian try something similar years ago?)

I believe that Brian mentioned to me years ago that he was able to get R (and the Rcmdr package) to work fine with a native version of Tcl/Tk for Macs. Beyond that, I don't recall.

> 
> It does actually seem to work to build R against the system-supplied
> v.8.5 frameworks. However, this is Aqua-based, and the fonts are a bit
> weird (smooth, but way too small) and the Rcmdr menus get moved to the
> top bar.

Moving the menus to the top bar is desirable, in my opinion, because it's what Mac users expect. If the problem is simply with the font sizes, I should be able to adjust that automatically, as I do now.

> 
> I am pretty sure by now that all this stuff is a generic tcltk build
> problem and way out of John's domain. (Thanks for posting the font code,
> John. I hope I can get around to having a closer look at it at some
> point. Those .Tcl(paste()) constructs make me cringe a bit, but not all
> are easily eliminated.)

If you see a better way to do this, of course I'd appreciate that. It took a fair amount of work to adjust the fonts so that they look right on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.

Best,
 John

> 
> -pd
> 
> > On 16 May 2017, at 23:52 , peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On 16 May 2017, at 21:03 , peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't think the config flags for R matter in this regard. The
> behaviour is completely paralleled by wish8.6:
> >
> > Hmmm, not sure the wish ::tk::pkgconfig thing proves anything, after I
> tried some of the ActiveState installs and a source build. This stuff is
> making my head spin!
> >
> > However, I discovered that it is possible to install R-3.4.0.pkg as
> usual, and then a customized install of (say) R-3.3-branch-
> mavericks.pkg, omitting everything except the Tcl/Tk stuff. That gives
> you R 3.4.0 and Rcmdr with antialiased fonts.
> >
> > --
> > Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3,
> > 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> > Phone: (+45)38153501
> > Office: A 4.23
> > Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> --
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000
> Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Office: A 4.23
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>