Darwin + Tkinter + Aqua-Tk? (Re: Macintosh Development)

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <3CBB9217.8A54E272 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>,
 Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

>David Eppstein wrote:
>> 
>> If you've installed a *different* version of Python (Unix Python, not
>> MacPython), you can do this.  It doesn't come installed by default, and
>> I have no idea whether it can do GUI stuff (unless you also install
>> X-windows, or something).
>
>In theory, it would seem that you could install Unix python
>on Mac OS X together with the Aqua version of Tcl/Tk, and
>run Tkinter stuff.
>
>When I tried this recently, however, it didn't work. I
>got a Tkinter window, but it was "dead" -- it didn't
>respond to mouse clicks. Tcl applications run using
>wish worked, but it wouldn't work from Python for
>some reason.
>
>I'd be interested if anyone happens to know how to
>get this to work!

I got it to work as follows:
- install fink (a Debian software installer for MacOS X)
- use fink to install:
  - Python 2.2 binary (be sure to install the full version;
    in other words, avoid the "no X" version)
  - xfree-86-base binary
  - xfree-86-root binary (approx; the rootless version whatever it's 
called)
- At this point you'll have something that won't quite work (unless fink 
has been updated), since it has installed a BROKEN version of twm window 
manager. To fix this...
-Go to the OroborOSX web site and get the installer. Install that.

Fink includes some other window managers that I have not tried 
(including the vanilla unix oroborus, of which OroborOSX is a 
MacOS-X-specific variant); some of them probably work fine, and it'd 
have the advantage of letting fink manage all the code for you.

Also, note that some of the fink binaries are (or were) rather out of 
date, including xfree-86. If you want to be more up to day, check the 
source code installer and the "unstable" area.

Regards,

-- Russell
-- 
Return      owen
address     astro
garbled     washington
in header   edu