Tcl/Tk issues in arm64 build of R 4.1.0
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 at stats.ox.ac.uk Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford