[R-SIG-Mac] Tcl/Tk issues in arm64 build of R 4.1.0

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 09/09/2021 19:03, John Fox wrote:
> Dear Simon, Philippe, and list members,
> 
> I've encountered some Tcl/Tk-related issues with the Apple silicon arm64 
> build of R 4.1.0 for macOS. These issues affect the Rcmdr package, 
> although they don't prevent it from working:
> 
> (1) Some fonts that are available for the Intel build appear to be 
> missing from the arm64 build. Compare the screen shots of the Rcmdr main 
> window at 
> <https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/.Pickup/x86_64-apple-darwin17.0.png> 
> (Intel build) and 
> <https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/.Pickup/aarch64-apple-darwin20.png> 
> (arm64 build). This problem is purely aesthetic.

It would be helpful to know what those fonts are.  This is likely to be 
a fontconfig issue and needs to be debugged by name.

> (2) The Tcl/Tk Tktable package is apparently absent from the arm64 build 
> but still present in the Intel build. The Rcmdr detects its absence and 
> suppresses some features (i.e., those requiring the Rcmdr data editor). 
> I understand that the Tktable package is problematic and it may have 
> been removed intentionally.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tktable/files/tktable/2.10/Tktable2.10.tar.gz 
(apparently the latest version from 2008)
does not compile against recent Tcl/Tk (8.6.11 seems to be used): it 
uses 'panic' which should be 'Tcl_Panic'.    (The Intel build appears to 
be much older, 8.6.6.)

I have a patched version: AFAICS it installs entirely into 
/opt/R/arm64/lib I could tar it up and make it available.

I could also send the patch to Simon for future use, but note that 
https://mac.r-project.org/libs-arm64/ contains an aqua build of Tcl/Tk 
(not the X11 build in the CRAN build of R 4.1.[01]) and which does not 
support Tcl/Tk.




-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford