Idle on Mac issues

[Ned Deily]

In article <m3ajif$30o$1 at virtdiesel.mng.cu.mi.it>,
 Andrea D'Amore <anddamNOPSAM+gruppi at brapi.net> wrote:
> On 2014-11-04 12:43:59 +0000, Rustom Mody said:
> 
> > I seem to be stuck with some issues of Idle on macs.
> > The page https://www.python.org/download/mac/tcltk
> > seems to talk only of Tcl/Tk versions 8.5
> 
> System's 8.5 should be enough, if not there's explicit mention of the 
> ActiveTcl distribution.

The Tcl/Tk 8.5.x versions shipped by Apple since OS X 10.6, and 
including 10.10, lag behind the current releases of Tcl/Tk; all Apple 
8.5 version have serious bugs that have been fixed upstream.  The most 
serious involves an immediate, unrecoverable crash in Tk when typing a 
composition character in an edit window or the IDLE shell, for example 
option-u (to make an umlaut) with a US input method.  That's why we 
strongly urge IDLE users to *not* use the Apple-supplied Tcl/Tk.  (The 
Apple-supplied Tk 8.5 with OS X 10.6 is pretty much unusable with IDLE.) 
Unfortunately, it's not trivial nor advisable to modify the 
system-supplied Python to use a newer third-party Tcl/Tk.  The Pythons 
provide by the python.org OS X binary installers will automatically use 
a third-party Tcl/Tk 8.5.x installed in /Library/Frameworks (like 
ActiveTcl 8.5) and fall back to the system Tcl/Tk 8.5 in 
/System/Library/Frameworks.  Since Apple does not currently ship Tcl/Tk 
8.6, the python.org OS X binary installer Pythons currently do not 
support 8.6, either.
  
> > Macports seem to have at 8.6
> > https://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=library&substr=tcl
> 
> But that won't likely be used by a binary python installation, unless 
> you're using python from MacPorts as well.

Yes, but, if you are using MacPorts, you should use one of its Python 
anyway.  Note that the MacPorts Tk 8.6 has two variants: +quartz (for 
the native Cocoa Tk) and +x11 (for a traditional X11-based Tk).  Because 
of many odd implementation choices with X11 and X11 Tk on OS X, I do not 
recommend using the X11 Tk on OS X with IDLE.

> I'm on 10.10 (happily) running MacPorts, I have system's python 2.7.6 
> as well as 2.7.8 and 3.4.2 from MacPorts, these two built with Xquartz 
> support.
> I can start the idle binary provided by all of those, the system's with 
> native GUI, and have working Options menu in all of them.

BTW, there have been various tweaks to IDLE's Preferences and Options 
menus in recent releases of Python.  You are well-advised to use the 
latest versions of Python, currently 3.4.2 and 2.7.8, to get the best 
experience with IDLE.
 
> I'd suggest the people having issue to describe their issues here, with 
> details on the system version, python version, the exact command they 
> run and the error they get.

Good suggestion. Also, it would be a good idea to check the Python bug 
tracker, bugs.python.org, for existing problem reports and to open new 
issues if none found.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org