Ugly default Tk font on Mac OS

Dear all,

Milan and I have now corresponded about this issue privately, and it appears that there's a difference in the font used under his Mac OS X system (running Snow Leopard) and mine (running Mountain Lion). I currently get the font

	> tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")

	<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 10 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0

which (to my eye) is substantially more attractive than what I get when I hard-code Helvetica:

	<Tcl> -family Helvetica -size 10 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0

I don't know what the source of the difference is -- a different X-windows is used for Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, and Milan and I are in different language locales.

Of course, if there's a way to correct this problem, I'm happy to implement it.

tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")

Best,
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Milan Bouchet-Valat [mailto:nalimilan at club.fr]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 4:15 AM
To: r-sig-mac
Cc: John Fox
Subject: Ugly default Tk font on Mac OS

Hi!

On Mac OS, since John Fox has removed the code that forced the default
font to be Helvetica (which is a good idea), Rcommander looks terribly
ugly (try by yourself ;-). I've reports of this on at least two
machines, under Snow Leopard.

I've played a bit with fonts on such machines, and I discovered that the
problem is not particular to Rcmdr at all, but that it affects all named
fonts that are created manually.

Rcommander uses a font created that way:
.Tcl("font create RcmdrDefaultFont -size X") # with X a given value

On Mac OS, this command creates a font whose family name is "fixed",
according to tkfont.actual(), and it is somewhat translated to an ugly
font. This is weird, because all default Tk fonts, like TkDefaultFont,
TkTextFont, TkMenuFont... all use "helvetica" as font family, which is a
reasonable default (and not a fixed font). What might be happening on
Macs is that system fonts like "systemSystemFont",
"systemApplicationFont" and friends are _not_ defined correctly, i.e.
they also use "fixed" as font family. So maybe newly created named fonts
inherits from them.

On Linux (and most likely on Windows), the default font family is
correct when creating a named font.


Here's a minimal example that reproduces the issue:
library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")
tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong
tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK
tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong
etc.


Regards

-----Original Message-----
From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsemius at comcast.net]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 1:54 PM
To: John Fox
Cc: 'Milan Bouchet-Valat'; 'r-sig-mac'
Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Ugly default Tk font on Mac OS


On Oct 8, 2012, at 10:26 AM, John Fox wrote:

Dear all,

Milan and I have now corresponded about this issue privately, and it

appears that there's a difference in the font used under his Mac OS X
system (running Snow Leopard) and mine (running Mountain Lion). I
currently get the font

	> tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")

	<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 10 -weight normal -slant

roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0

which (to my eye) is substantially more attractive than what I get

when I hard-code Helvetica:

	<Tcl> -family Helvetica -size 10 -weight normal -slant roman -

underline 0 -overstrike 0

I don't know what the source of the difference is -- a different X-

windows is used for Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, and Milan and I are
in different language locales.

Of course, if there's a way to correct this problem, I'm happy to

implement it.

Just as a point of reference. With a recently installed update to Snow
Leopard (yes, I'm way behind that adoption curve) and Rcmdr version
1.8.4 ( I'm not a user and I see this is out-of-date) , I get:

tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman
-underline 0 -overstrike 0

Best,
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Milan Bouchet-Valat [mailto:nalimilan at club.fr]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 4:15 AM
To: r-sig-mac
Cc: John Fox
Subject: Ugly default Tk font on Mac OS

Hi!

On Mac OS, since John Fox has removed the code that forced the

default

font to be Helvetica (which is a good idea), Rcommander looks

terribly

ugly (try by yourself ;-). I've reports of this on at least two
machines, under Snow Leopard.

I've played a bit with fonts on such machines, and I discovered that

the

problem is not particular to Rcmdr at all, but that it affects all

named

fonts that are created manually.

Rcommander uses a font created that way:
.Tcl("font create RcmdrDefaultFont -size X") # with X a given value

On Mac OS, this command creates a font whose family name is "fixed",
according to tkfont.actual(), and it is somewhat translated to an

ugly

font. This is weird, because all default Tk fonts, like

TkDefaultFont,

TkTextFont, TkMenuFont... all use "helvetica" as font family, which

is a

reasonable default (and not a fixed font). What might be happening on
Macs is that system fonts like "systemSystemFont",
"systemApplicationFont" and friends are _not_ defined correctly, i.e.
they also use "fixed" as font family. So maybe newly created named

fonts

inherits from them.

On Linux (and most likely on Windows), the default font family is
correct when creating a named font.


Here's a minimal example that reproduces the issue:
library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")
tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong
tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK
tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong
etc.


Regards

David Winsemius, MD
Alameda, CA, USA

Just as a point of reference. With a recently installed update to Snow
Leopard (yes, I'm way behind that adoption curve) and Rcmdr version
1.8.4 ( I'm not a user and I see this is out-of-date) , I get:

tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")
<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

-----Original Message-----
From: Milan Bouchet-Valat [mailto:nalimilan at club.fr]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 2:11 PM
To: David Winsemius
Cc: John Fox; 'r-sig-mac'
Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Ugly default Tk font on Mac OS

Le lundi 08 octobre 2012 ? 10:54 -0700, David Winsemius a ?crit :

Just as a point of reference. With a recently installed update to Snow
Leopard (yes, I'm way behind that adoption curve) and Rcmdr version
1.8.4 ( I'm not a user and I see this is out-of-date) , I get:

tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")
<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant

roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0
Interesting. Do you get the same if you run my small test?

library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")
tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong
tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK
tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong

Thanks!

.Tcl("font create test")

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont")

Le lundi 08 octobre 2012 ? 10:54 -0700, David Winsemius a ?crit :

Just as a point of reference. With a recently installed update to Snow
Leopard (yes, I'm way behind that adoption curve) and Rcmdr version
1.8.4 ( I'm not a user and I see this is out-of-date) , I get:

tkfont.actual("RcmdrDefaultFont")
<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

Interesting. Do you get the same if you run my small test?

library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")
tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong
tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK
tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong

.Tcl("font create test")

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

require(Rcmdr)> library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

tkfont.actual("test")

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont")

<Tcl> test 

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong

(Actually there was a trailing "+" sign aft the last one because of amissing quote.

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

I don't know if I need to update to the current Rcmdr, since this was earlier done without it being loaded.

But I did and then here goes:

require(Rcmdr)> library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")

Error in structure(.External("dotTcl", ..., PACKAGE = "tcltk"), class = "tclObj") : 
  [tcl] named font "test" already exists.

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

I see a "Script Window and an Output Window but admit considerable
difficulty with its very non-Mac-ish interface conventions (no cut and
paste, unclear what the submit button requires for proper operation);

I seem to be getting the same font being identified when I run these
tests from the "Script Window" but the Output Window was not allowing
me to copy to the Clipboard in the various efforts I have made. This
is the output of the Save Output as ... pulldown menu:

tkfont.actual("test")

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont")

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

For curiosity, I tried this on my Windows 7 machine:

.Tcl("font create test")

<Tcl> test 

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family Arial -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

<Tcl> -family {Segoe UI} -size 9 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont")

<Tcl> -family Arial -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0

Note that 1 matches 3 but not 2.

Le lundi 08 octobre 2012 ? 12:15 -0700, David Winsemius a ?crit :

<Tcl> test 

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont) # Wrong

(Actually there was a trailing "+" sign aft the last one because of amissing quote.

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

I don't know if I need to update to the current Rcmdr, since this was earlier done without it being loaded.

No, it's not needed, the test is plain tcltk.

But I did and then here goes:

require(Rcmdr)> library(tcltk)
.Tcl("font create test")

Error in structure(.External("dotTcl", ..., PACKAGE = "tcltk"), class = "tclObj") : 
 [tcl] named font "test" already exists.

tkfont.actual("test") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont") # OK

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("systemSystemFont") # Wrong

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

I see a "Script Window and an Output Window but admit considerable
difficulty with its very non-Mac-ish interface conventions (no cut and
paste, unclear what the submit button requires for proper operation);

Weird, because cut and paste should work AFAIK.

I seem to be getting the same font being identified when I run these
tests from the "Script Window" but the Output Window was not allowing
me to copy to the Clipboard in the various efforts I have made. This
is the output of the Save Output as ... pulldown menu:

tkfont.actual("test")

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size 12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

tkfont.actual("TkDefaultFont")

<Tcl> -family {Bitstream Vera Sans} -size -12 -weight normal -slant roman -underline 0 -overstrike 0 

Thanks! So it means you really get Bitstream Vera Sans by default in all
possible cases. This is unexpected to me, as I thought this font was not
included by default on Mac OS X. Maybe this is just the default for
X11... I guess you haven't changed your default font for the system
(native Quartz apps)?

quartzFonts()

Regards

Nope. Haven't changed any of the defaults:

quartzFonts()

$serif
[1] "Times-Roman"      "Times-Bold"       "Times-Italic"     "Times-BoldItalic"

$sans
[1] "Helvetica"             "Helvetica-Bold"        "Helvetica-Oblique"    
[4] "Helvetica-BoldOblique"

$mono
[1] "Courier"             "Courier-Bold"        "Courier-Oblique"    
[4] "Courier-BoldOblique"

Le lundi 08 octobre 2012 ? 12:43 -0700, David Winsemius a ?crit :

Nope. Haven't changed any of the defaults:

quartzFonts()

$serif
[1] "Times-Roman"      "Times-Bold"       "Times-Italic"     "Times-BoldItalic"

$sans
[1] "Helvetica"             "Helvetica-Bold"        "Helvetica-Oblique"    
[4] "Helvetica-BoldOblique"

$mono
[1] "Courier"             "Courier-Bold"        "Courier-Oblique"    
[4] "Courier-BoldOblique"

Then, there's still a bug in Tcl/Tk or X11: it would be better if it
used the default sans font, Helvetica, so that it looks as similar as
possible to Quartz apps. But I have no idea where the default of
Bitstream Vera Sans comes from...

X11Fonts()

Cheers

On Oct 8, 2012, at 12:46 PM, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote:

Le lundi 08 octobre 2012 ? 12:43 -0700, David Winsemius a ?crit :

Nope. Haven't changed any of the defaults:

quartzFonts()

$serif
[1] "Times-Roman"      "Times-Bold"       "Times-Italic"     "Times-BoldItalic"

$sans
[1] "Helvetica"             "Helvetica-Bold"        "Helvetica-Oblique"    
[4] "Helvetica-BoldOblique"

$mono
[1] "Courier"             "Courier-Bold"        "Courier-Oblique"    
[4] "Courier-BoldOblique"

Then, there's still a bug in Tcl/Tk or X11: it would be better if it
used the default sans font, Helvetica, so that it looks as similar as
possible to Quartz apps. But I have no idea where the default of
Bitstream Vera Sans comes from...

"Helvetica" %in% as.character(tkfont.families())

"Times" %in% as.character(tkfont.families())

[1] TRUE

"Courier" %in% as.character(tkfont.families())

[1] TRUE

Cannot tell you. Is this at all helpful:

X11Fonts()

$serif
[1] "-*-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$sans
[1] "-*-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$mono
[1] "-*-courier-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Times
[1] "-adobe-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Helvetica
[1] "-adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$CyrTimes
[1] "-cronyx-times-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$CyrHelvetica
[1] "-cronyx-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Arial
[1] "-monotype-arial-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

$Mincho
[1] "-*-mincho-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

Cheers

David Winsemius, MD
Alameda, CA, USA