Tcl/Tk macOS README ---------------------- This is the README file for the macOS/Darwin version of Tcl/Tk. 1. Where to go for support -------------------------- - The tcl-mac mailing list on sourceforge is the best place to ask questions specific to Tcl & Tk on macOS: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac (this page also has a link to searchable archives of the list, please check them before asking on the list, many questions have already been answered). - For general Tcl/Tk questions, the newsgroup comp.lang.tcl is your best bet: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/ - The Tcl'ers Wiki also has many pages dealing with Tcl & Tk on macOS, see https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/MacOS - Please report bugs with Tk on macOS to the tracker: https://core.tcl-lang.org/tk/reportlist 2. Using Tcl/Tk on macOS --------------------------- - There are two versions of Tk available on macOS: TkAqua using the native aqua widgets and look&feel, and TkX11 using the traditional unix X11 widgets. TkX11 requires an X11 server to be installed, such as XQuartz (available from www.xquartz.org). TkAqua and TkX11 can be distinguished at runtime via [tk windowingsystem]. - At a minimum, macOS 10.3 is required to run Tcl and TkX11. TkAqua requires macOS 10.6 or later. - Unless weak-linking is used, Tcl/Tk built on macOS 10.x will not run on 10.y with y < x; on the other hand Tcl/Tk built on 10.y will always run on 10.x with y <= x (but without any of the fixes and optimizations that would be available in a binary built on 10.x). Weak-linking is available on OS X 10.2 or later, it additionally allows Tcl/Tk built on 10.x to run on any 10.y with x > y >= z (for a chosen z >= 2). - Wish checks the Resources/Scripts directory in its application bundle for a file called AppMain.tcl, if found it is used as the startup script and the Scripts folder is added to the auto_path. This can be used to emulate the old OS9 TclTk droplets. - If standard input is a special file of zero length (e.g. /dev/null), Wish brings up the Tk console window at startup. This is the case when double clicking Wish in the Finder (or using 'open Wish.app' from the Terminal). - Tcl extensions can be installed in any of: $HOME/Library/Tcl /Library/Tcl $HOME/Library/Frameworks /Library/Frameworks (searched in that order). Given a potential package directory $pkg, Tcl on OSX checks for the file $pkg/Resources/Scripts/pkgIndex.tcl as well as the usual $pkg/pkgIndex.tcl. This allows building extensions as frameworks with all script files contained in the Resources/Scripts directory of the framework. - The 'deploy' target of macosx/GNUmakefile installs the html manpages into the standard documentation location in the Tcl/Tk frameworks: Tcl.framework/Resources/Documentation/Reference/Tcl Tk.framework/Resources/Documentation/Reference/Tk No nroff manpages are installed by default by the GNUmakefile. - The Tcl and Tk frameworks can be installed in any of the system's standard framework directories: $HOME/Library/Frameworks /Library/Frameworks - ${prefix}/bin/wish8.x is a script that calls a copy of 'Wish' contained in Tk.framework/Resources - if 'Wish' is started from the Finder or via 'open', $argv may contain a "-psn_XXXX" argument. This is the process serial number, you may need to filter it out for cross platform compatibility of your scripts. - the env array is different when Wish is started from the Finder (i.e. via LaunchServices) than when it (or tclsh) is invoked from the Terminal, in particular PATH may not be what you expect. (Wish started by LaunchServices inherits loginwindow's environment variables, which are essentially those set in $HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist, and are unrelated to those set in your shell). - TkAqua provides access to native OS X images via the Tk native bitmap facility (including any image file readable by NSImage). A native bitmap name is interpreted as follows (in order): - predefined builtin 32x32 icon name (stop, caution, document, etc) - name defined by [tk::mac::iconBitmap] - NSImage named image name - NSImage url string - 4-char OSType of IconServices icon the syntax of [tk::mac::iconBitmap] is as follows: tk::mac::iconBitmap name width height -kind value where -kind is one of -file icon of file at given path -fileType icon of given file type -osType icon of given 4-char OSType file type -systemType icon for given IconServices 4-char OSType -namedImage named NSImage for given name -imageFile image at given path This support was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7. - TkAqua cursor names are interpred as follows (in order): - standard or platform-specific Tk cursor name (c.f. cursors.n) - @path to any image file readable by NSImage - NSImage named image name Support for the latter two was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7. - The standard Tk dialog commands [tk_getOpenFile], [tk_chooseDirectory], [tk_getSaveFile] and [tk_messageBox] all take an additional optional -command parameter on TkAqua. If it is present, the given command prefix is evaluated at the global level when the dialog closes, with the dialog command's result appended (the dialog command itself returning an emtpy result). If the -parent option is also present, the dialog is configured as a modeless (window-modal) sheet attached to the parent window and the dialog command returns immediately. Support for -command was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7. - The TkAqua-specific [tk::mac::standardAboutPanel] command brings the standard Cocoa about panel to the front, with all its information filled in from your application bundle files (i.e. standard about panel with no options specified). See Apple Technote TN2179 and the AppKit documentation for -[NSApplication orderFrontStandardAboutPanelWithOptions:] for details on the Info.plist keys and app bundle files used by the about panel. This support was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7. - TkAqua has three special menu names that give access to the standard Application, Window and Help menus, see menu.n for details. By default, the platform-specific standard Help menu item "YourApp Help" performs the default Cocoa action of showing the Help Book configured in the application's Info.plist (or displaying an alert if no Help Book is set). This action can be customized by defining a procedure named [tk::mac::ShowHelp]. If present, this procedure is invoked instead by the standard Help menu item. Support for the Window menu and [tk::mac::ShowHelp] was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7. - The TkAqua-specific command [tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle style] is used to get and set macOS-specific toplevel window class and attributes. Note that the window class and many attributes have to be set before the window is first mapped for the change to have any effect. The command has the following syntax: tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle style window ?class? ?attributes? The 2 argument form returns a list of the current class and attributes for the given window. The 3 argument form sets the class for the given window using the default attributes for that class. The 4 argument form sets the class and the list of attributes for the given window. Window class names: document, modal, floating, utility, toolbar, simple, help, overlay Window attribute names: standardDocument, standardFloating, resizable, fullZoom, horizontalZoom, verticalZoom, closeBox, collapseBox, toolbarButton, sideTitlebar, noTitleBar, unifiedTitleAndToolbar, metal, hud, noShadow, doesNotCycle, noActivates, hideOnSuspend, inWindowMenu, ignoreClicks, doesNotHide, canJoinAllSpaces, moveToActiveSpace, nonActivating Note that not all attributes are valid for all window classes. Support for the 3 argument form was added with the Cocoa-based Tk 8.5.7, at the same time support for some legacy Carbon-specific classes and attributes was removed (they are still accepted by the command but no longer have any effect). - Another command available in the tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle namespace is: tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle tabbingid window ?newId? which can be used to get or set the tabbingIdentifier for the NSWindow associated with a Tk Window. See section 3 for details. - The command: tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle appearance window ?newAppearance? is available when Tk is built and run on macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or later. In that case the Ttk widgets all support the "Dark Mode" appearance which was introduced in 10.14. The command accepts the following values for the optional newAppearance option: "aqua", "darkaqua", or "auto". If the appearance is set to aqua or darkaqua then the window will be displayed with the corresponding appearance independent of any preferences settings. If it is set to "auto" the appearance will be determined by the preferences. This command can be used to opt out of Dark Mode on a per-window basis. It may be best to run the "update" command before setting the appearance property, to allow the event loop to run. - To determine the current appearance of a window in macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and higher, one can use the command: tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle isdark window? The boolean return value is true if the window is currently displayed with the dark appearance. - If you want to use Remote Debugging with Xcode, you need to set the environment variable XCNOSTDIN to 1 in the Executable editor for Wish. That will cause us to force closing stdin & stdout. Otherwise, given how Xcode launches Wish remotely, they will be left open and then Wish & gdb will fight for stdin. 3. FullScreen, Split View and Tabbed Windows -------------------------------------------- Since the release of OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) a steadily expanding sequence of high level window operations have been added to Apple's window manager. These operations are launched by user actions which are handled directly by the window manager; they are not initiated by the application. In some, but not all cases, the application is notified before and after the operations are carried out. In OSX releases up to and including 10.6 there were three buttons with stoplight colors located on the left side of a window's title bar. The function of the green button was to "zoom" or "maximize" the window, i.e. to expand the window so that it fills the entire screen, while preserving the appearance of the window including its title bar. The release of OSX 10.7 (Lion) introduced the "FullScreen" window which not only filled the screen but also hid the window's title bar and the menu bar which normally appears at the top of the screen. These hidden objects would only become visible when the mouse hovered near the top of the screen. FullScreen mode was initiated by pressing a button showing two outward pointing arrows located on the right side of the title bar; it was terminated by pressing a similar button with inward pointing arrows on the right hand side of the menu bar. In OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) the FullScreen button was removed. The green button was repurposed to cause a window to become a FullScreen window. To zoom a window the user had to hold down the option key while pressing the green button. The release of OSX 10.11 added a third function to the green button: to create two half-screen windows with hidden title bars and a hidden menu bar, called Split View windows. If the green button is held down for one second its window expands to fill half of the screen. It can be moved to one side or the other with the mouse. The opposite side shows thumbnail images of other windows. Selecting one of the thumbnails expands its window to fill that half of the screen. The divider between the two windows can be moved to adjust the percentage of the screen occupied by each of the two tiles. In OSX 10.12 (Sierra) Tabbed windows were introduced. These allow an application with multiple windows to display its windows as tabs within a single window frame. Clicking on a tab brings its window into view. Tabs can be rearranged by dragging. Dragging a tab to the desktop turns it into a separate window. Items in the Window menu can be used to cycle through the tabs, move tabbed windows to separate windows, or merge a set of separate windows as tabs in the same window frame. Tk now fully supports all of these high level window operations on any system where the operation exists. The FullScreen and Split View windows are handled automatically with no action required on the part of the programmer. Tabbed windows, on the other hand, require some attention from the programmer. Because many of the operations with tabs are handled through the application's Window menu, it is essential that an application provide a Windows menu to avoid presenting a confusing interface to the user. This cannot be ignored, in part because the systemwide Dock Preferences offers an option to always attempt to open application windows as tabs. An application which does not provide a Window menu will necessarily present a confusing interface to any user who has selected this option. A further complication is that it is not neccessarily appropriate for all of an application's windows to be grouped together as tabs in the same frame. In fact, the Apple guidelines insist that windows which are grouped together as tabs should be similar to each other. The mechanism provided for arranging this was to assign to each NSwindow a tabbingIdentifier, and to require that all windows grouped together as tabs in the same window frame must have the same tabbingIdentifier. A tabbingIdentifier is implemented as an arbitrary string, and a system-generated default tabbingIdentifier is provided to all new windows. Tk provides a means for getting and setting the tabbingIdentifier of the NSWindow underlying a Tk Window. This is handled by the command tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle tabbingid window ?newId? (This command generates an error if used on OSX 10.11 or earlier, since the tabbingIdentifier does not exist on those systems.) The command returns the tabbingIdentifier which had been assigned to the window prior to execution of the command. If the optional newId argument is omitted, the window's tabbingIdentifier is not changed. Otherwise it is set to the string specified by the argument. Since NSWindows can only be grouped together as tabs if they all have the same tabbingIdentifier, one can prevent a window from becoming a tab by giving it a unique tabbingIdentifier. This is independent of any preferences setting. To ensure that we maintain consistency, changing the tabbingIdentifier of a window which is already displayed as a tab will also cause it to become a separate window. 4. Ttk, Dark Mode and semantic colors --------------------------------------- With the release of OSX 10.14 (Mojave), Apple introduced the DarkAqua appearance. Part of the implementation of the Dark Mode was to make some of the named NSColors have dynamic values. Apple calls these "semantic colors" because the name does not specify a specific color, but rather refers to the context in which the color should be used. Tk now provides the following semantic colors as system colors: systemTextColor, systemTextBackgroundColor, systemSelectedTextColor, systemSelectedTextBackgroundColor, systemControlTextColor, systemDisabledControlTextColor, systemLabelColor, systemLinkColor, and systemControlAccentColor. All of these except the last three were present in OSX 10.0 (and those three are simulated in systems where they do not exist). The change in 10.14 was that the RGB color value of these colors became dynamic, meaning that the color value can change when the application appearance changes. In particular, when a user selects Dark Mode in the system preferences these colors change appearance. For example systemTextColor is dark in Aqua and light in DarkAqua. One additional color, systemSelectedTabTextColor, does not exist in macOS but is used by Tk to match the different colors used for Notebook tab text in different OS versions. The default background and foreground colors of most of the Tk widgets have been set to semantic colors, which means that the widgets will change appearance, and remain usable, when Dark Mode is selected in the system preferences. However, to get a close match to the native Dark Mode style it is recommended to use Ttk widgets when possible. Apple's tab view and GroupBox objects delimit their content by displaying it within a rounded rectangle with a background color that contrasts with the background of the containing object. This means that the background color of a Ttk widget depends on how deeply it is nested inside of other widgets that use contrasting backgrounds. To support this, there are 8 contrasting system colors named systemWindowBackgroundColor, and systemWindowBackgroundColor1 - 7. The systemWindowBackgroundColor is the standard background for a dialog window and the others match the contrasting background colors used in ttk::notebooks and ttk::labelframes which are nested to the corresponding depth. 5. Building Tcl/Tk on macOS ------------------------------ - macOS 10.6 is required to build TkAqua and TkX11. The XCode application provides everything needed to build Tk, but it is not necessary to install the full XCode. It suffices to install the Command Line Tools package, which can be done by running the command: xcode-select --install - Tcl/Tk are most easily built as macOS frameworks via GNUmakefile in tcl/macosx and tk/macosx (see below for details), but can also be built with the standard unix configure and make buildsystem in tcl/unix resp. tk/unix as on any other unix platform (indeed, the GNUmakefiles are just wrappers around the unix buildsystem). The macOS specific configure flags are --enable-aqua, --enable-framework and --disable-corefoundation (which disables CF and notably reverts to the standard select based notifier). Note that --enable-aqua is incompatible with --disable-corefoundation (for both Tcl and Tk configure). - It was once possible to build with the Xcode IDE via the projects in tk/macosx, but this has not been tested recently. Take care to use the project matching your DevTools and OS version: Tk.xcode: for Xcode 3.1 on 10.5 Tk.xcodeproj: for Xcode 3.2 on 10.6 These have the following targets: Tk: calls through to tk/macosx/GNUMakefile, requires a corresponding build of the Tcl target of tcl/macosx/Tcl.xcode. tktest: static build of TkAqua tktest for debugging. tktest-X11: static build of TkX11 tktest for debugging. The following build configurations are available: Debug: debug build for the active architecture, with Fix & Continue enabled. Debug clang: use clang compiler. Debug llvm-gcc: use llvm-gcc compiler. Debug gcc40: use gcc 4.0 compiler. DebugNoGC: disable Objective-C garbage collection. DebugNoFixAndContinue: disable Fix & Continue. DebugUnthreaded: disable threading. DebugNoCF: disable corefoundation (X11 only). DebugNoCFUnthreaded: disable corefoundation an threading. DebugMemCompile: enable memory and bytecode debugging. DebugLeaks: define PURIFY. DebugGCov: enable generation of gcov data files. Debug64bit: configure with --enable-64bit (requires building on a 64bit capable processor). Release: release build for the active architecture. ReleaseUniversal: 32/64-bit universal build. ReleaseUniversal clang: use clang compiler. ReleaseUniversal llvm-gcc: use llvm-gcc compiler. ReleaseUniversal gcc40: use gcc 4.0 compiler. ReleaseUniversal10.5SDK: build against the 10.5 SDK (with 10.5 deployment target). Note that the non-SDK configurations have their deployment target set to 10.5 (Tk.xcode) resp. 10.6 (Tk.xcodeproj). The Xcode projects refer to the toplevel tcl and tk source directories via the the TCL_SRCROOT and TK_SRCROOT user build settings, by default these are set to the project-relative paths '../../tcl' and '../../tk', if your source directories are named differently, e.g. '../../tcl8.6' and '../../tk8.6', you need to manually change the TCL_SRCROOT and TK_SRCROOT settings by editing your ${USER}.pbxuser file (located inside the Tk.xcodeproj bundle directory) with a text editor. - To enable weak-linking, set the MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET environment variable to the minimal OS version the binaries should be able to run on, e.g: export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 This requires at least gcc 3.1; with gcc 4 or later, set/add to CFLAGS instead: export CFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.6" Support for weak-linking was added with 8.4.14/8.5a5. Detailed Instructions for building with macosx/GNUmakefile ---------------------------------------------------------- - Unpack the Tcl and Tk source release archives and place the tcl and tk source trees in a common parent directory. [ If you don't want have the two source trees in one directory, you'll need to ] [ create the following symbolic link for the build to work as setup by default ] [ ln -fs /path_to_tcl/build /path_to_tk/build ] [ (where /path_to_{tcl,tk} is the directory containing the tcl resp. tk tree) ] [ or you can pass an argument of BUILD_DIR=/somewhere to the tcl and tk make. ] - The following instructions assume the Tcl and Tk source trees are named "tcl${ver}" and "tk${ver}" (where ${ver} is a shell variable containing the Tcl/Tk version number, e.g. '8.6'). Setup this shell variable as follows: ver="8.6" If you are building from CVS, omit this step (CVS source tree names usually do not contain a version number). - Setup environment variables as desired, e.g. for a universal build on 10.5: CFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -arch ppc -mmacosx-version-min=10.5" export CFLAGS - Change to the directory containing the Tcl and Tk source trees and build: make -C tcl${ver}/macosx make -C tk${ver}/macosx - Install Tcl and Tk onto the root volume (admin password required): sudo make -C tcl${ver}/macosx install sudo make -C tk${ver}/macosx install if you don't have an admin password, you can install into your home directory instead by passing an INSTALL_ROOT argument to make: make -C tcl${ver}/macosx install INSTALL_ROOT="${HOME}/" make -C tk${ver}/macosx install INSTALL_ROOT="${HOME}/" - The default GNUmakefile targets will build _both_ debug and optimized versions of the Tcl and Tk frameworks with the standard convention of naming the debug library Tcl.framework/Tcl_debug resp. Tk.framework/Tk_debug. This allows switching to the debug libraries at runtime by setting export DYLD_IMAGE_SUFFIX=_debug (c.f. man dyld for more details) If you only want to build and install the debug or optimized build, use the 'develop' or 'deploy' target variants of the GNUmakefile, respectively. For example, to build and install only the optimized versions: make -C tcl${ver}/macosx deploy make -C tk${ver}/macosx deploy sudo make -C tcl${ver}/macosx install-deploy sudo make -C tk${ver}/macosx install-deploy - The GNUmakefile can also build a version of Wish.app that has the Tcl and Tk frameworks embedded in its application package. This allows for standalone deployment of the application with no installation required, e.g. from read-only media. To build & install in this manner, use the 'embedded' variants of the GNUmakefile targets. For example, to build a standalone 'Wish.app' in ./emb/Applications/Utilities: make -C tcl${ver}/macosx embedded make -C tk${ver}/macosx embedded sudo make -C tcl${ver}/macosx install-embedded INSTALL_ROOT=`pwd`/emb/ sudo make -C tk${ver}/macosx install-embedded INSTALL_ROOT=`pwd`/emb/ Notes: * if you've already built standard TclTkAqua, building embedded does not require any new compiling or linking, so you can skip the first two makes. (making relinking unnecessary was added with 8.4.2) * the embedded frameworks include only optimized builds and no documentation. * the standalone Wish has the directory Wish.app/Contents/lib in its auto_path. Thus you can place tcl extensions in this directory (i.e. embed them in the app package) and load them with [package require]. - It is possible to build Tk against an installed Tcl.framework; but you will still need a tcl sourcetree in the location specified in TCL_SRC_DIR in Tcl.framework/tclConfig.sh. Also, linking with Tcl.framework has to work exactly as indicated in TCL_LIB_SPEC in Tcl.framework/tclConfig.sh. If you used non-default install locations for Tcl.framework, specify them as make overrides to the tk/macosx GNUmakefile, e.g. make -C tk${ver}/macosx \ TCL_FRAMEWORK_DIR=$HOME/Library/Frameworks TCLSH_DIR=$HOME/usr/bin sudo make -C tk${ver}/macosx install \ TCL_FRAMEWORK_DIR=$HOME/Library/Frameworks TCLSH_DIR=$HOME/usr/bin The Makefile variables TCL_FRAMEWORK_DIR and TCLSH_DIR were added with Tk 8.4.3. 5. Details regarding the macOS port of Tk. ------------------------------------------- 5.1 About the event loop ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The main program in a typical OSX application looks like this (see https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/\ Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSApplication_Class) void NSApplicationMain(int argc, char *argv[]) { [NSApplication sharedApplication]; [NSBundle loadNibNamed:@"myMain" owner:NSApp]; [NSApp run]; } Here NSApp is a standard global variable, initialized by the OS, which points to an object in a subclass of NSApplication (called TKApplication in the case of the macOS port of Tk). The [NSApp run] method implements the event loop for a typical Mac application. There are three key steps in the run method. First it calls [NSApp finishLaunching], which creates the bouncing application icon and does other mysterious things. Second it creates an NSAutoreleasePool. Third, it starts an event loop which drains the NSAutoreleasePool every time the queue is empty, and replaces the drained pool with a new one. This third step is essential to preventing memory leaks, since the internal methods of Appkit objects all assume that an autorelease pool is in scope and will be drained when the event processing cycle ends. The macOS Tk application does not call the [NSApp run] method at all. Instead it uses the event loop built in to Tk. So the application must take care to replicate the important features of the method ourselves. The way that autorelease pools are handled is discussed in 5.2 below. Here we discuss the event handling itself. The Tcl event loop simply consists of repeated calls to TclDoOneEvent. Each call to TclDoOneEvent begins by collecting all pending events from an "event source", converting them to Tcl events and adding them to the Tcl event queue. For macOS, the event source is the NSApp object, which maintains an event queue even though its run method will never be called to process them. The NSApp provides methods for inspecting the queue and removing events from it as well as the [NSApp sendevent] which sends an event to all of the application's NSWindows which can then send it to subwindows, etc. The event collection process consists of first calling a platform specific SetupProc and then a platform specific CheckProc. In the macOS port, these are named TkMacOSXEventsSetupProc and TkMacOSXEventsCheckProc. It is important to understand that the Apple window manager does not have the concept of an expose event. Their replacement for an expose event is to have the window manager call the [NSView drawRect] method in any situation where an expose event for that NSView would be generated in X11. The [NSView drawRect] method is a no-op which is expected to be overridden by any application. In the case of Tcl, the replacement [NSView drawRect] method creates a Tcl expose event for each dirty rectangle of the NSView, and then adds the expose event to the Tcl queue. 5.2 Autorelease pools ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In order to carry out the job of managing autorelease pools, which would normally be handled by the [NSApp run] method, a private NSAutoreleasePool* property is added to the TkApplication subclass of NSApplication. The TkpInit function calls [NSApp _setup] which initializes this property by creating an NSAutoreleasePool prior to calling [NSApp finishLaunching]. This mimics the behavior of the [NSApp run] method, which calls [NSApp finishLaunching] just before starting the event loop. Since the CheckProc function gets called for every Tk event, it is an appropriate place to drain the main NSAutoreleasePool and replace it with a new pool. This is done by calling the method [NSApp _resetAutoreleasePool], where _resetAutoreleasePool is a method which we define for the subclass. Unfortunately, by itself this is not sufficient for safe memory managememt because, as was made painfully evident with the release of OS X 10.13, it is possible for calls to TclDoOneEvent, and hence to CheckProc, to be nested. Draining the autorelease pool in a nested call leads to crashes as objects in use by the outer call can get freed by the inner call and then reused later. One particular situation where this happens is when a modal dialogue gets posted by a Tk Application. To address this, the NSApp object also implements a semaphore to prevent draining the autorelease pool in nested calls to CheckProc. One additional minor caveat for developers is that there are several steps of the Tk initialization which precede the call to TkpInit. Notably, the font package is initialized first. Since there is no NSAutoreleasePool in scope prior to calling TkpInit, the functions called in these preliminary stages need to create and drain their own NSAutoreleasePools whenever they call methods of Appkit objects (e.g. NSFont). 5.3 Clipping regions and "ghost windows" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Another unusual aspect of the macOS port is its use of clipping regions. It was part of Daniel Steffen's original design that the TkWindowPrivate struct maintains three HIShapeRef regions, named visRgn, aboveVisRgn and drawRgn. These regions are used as clipping masks whenever drawing into an NSView. The visRgn is the bounding box of the window with a rectangle removed for each subwindow and for each sibling window at a higher stacking level. The drawRgn is the intersection of the visRgn with the clipping rectangle of the window. (Normally, the clipping rectangle is the same as the bounding rectangle, but drawing can be clipped to a smaller rectangle by calling TkpClipDrawableToRect.) The aboveVisRgn is the intersection of the window's bounding rectangle with the bounding rectangle of the parent window. Much of the code in tkMacOSXSubwindows.c is devoted to rebuilding these clipping regions whenever something changes in the layout of the windows. This turns out to be a tricky thing to do and it is extremely prone to errors which can be difficult to trace. It is not entirely clear what the original reason for using these clipping regions was. But one benefit is that if they are correctly maintained then it allows windows to be drawn in any order. You do not have to draw them in the order of the window hierarchy. Each window can draw its entire rectangle through its own mask and never have to worry about drawing in the wrong place. It is likely that the need for using clipping regions arose because, as Apple explicitly states in the documentation for [NSView subviews], "The order of the subviews may be considered as being back-to-front, but this does not imply invalidation and drawing behavior." In the early versions of the macOS port, buttons were implemented as subviews of class TkButton. This probably exacerbated the likelihood that Tk windows would need to be drawn in arbitrary order. The most obvious side effect caused by not maintaining the clipping regions is the appearance of so-called "ghost windows". A common situation where these may arise is when a window containing buttons is being scrolled. A user may see two images of the same button on the screen, one in the pre-scroll location and one in the post-scroll location. To see how these 'ghost windows' can arise, think about what happens if the clipping regions are not maintained correctly. A window might have a rectangle missing from its clipping region because that rectangle is the bounding rectangle for a subwindow, say a button. The parent should not draw in the missing rectangle since doing so would trash the button. The button is responsible for drawing there. Now imagine that the button gets moved, say by a scroll, but the missing rectangle in the parent's clipping region does not get moved correctly, or it gets moved later on, after the parent has redrawn itself. The parent would still not be allowed to draw in the old rectangle, so the user would continue to see the image of the button in its old location, as well as another image in the new location. This is a prototypical example of a "ghost window". Anytime you see a "ghost window", you should suspect problems with the updates to the clipping region visRgn. It is natural to look for timing issues, race conditions, or other "event loop problems". But in fact, the whole design of the code is to make those timing issues irrelevant. As long as the clipping regions are correctly maintained the timing does not matter. And if they are not correctly maintained then you will see "ghost windows". It is worth including a detailed description of one specific place where the failure to correctly maintain clipping regions caused "ghost window" artifacts that plagued the macOS port for years. These occurred when scrolling a Text widget which contained embedded subwindows. It involved some specific differences between the low-level behavior of Apple's window manager versus those of the other platforms, and the fix ultimately required changes in the generic Tk implementation (documented in the comments in the DisplayText function). The Text widget attempts to improve perfomance when scrolling by minimizing the number of text lines which need to be redisplayed. It does this by calling the platform-specific TkScrollWindow function which uses a low-level routine to map one rectangle of the window to another. The TkScrollWindow function returns a damage region which is then used by the Text widget's DisplayText function to determine which text lines need to be redrawn. On the unix and win platforms, this damage region includes bounding rectangles for all embedded windows inside the Text widget. The way that this works is system dependent. On unix, the low level scrolling is done by XCopyRegion, which generates a GraphicsExpose event for each embedded window. These GraphicsExposed events are processsed within TkScrollWindow, using a special handler which adds the bounding rectangle of each subwindow to the damage region. On the win platform the damage region is built by the low level function ScrollWindowEx, and it also includes bounding rectangles for all embedded windows. This is possible because on X11 and Windows every Tk widget is also known to the window manager as a window. The situation is different on macOS. The underlying object for a top level window on macOS is the NSView. However, Apple explicitly warns in its documentation that performance degradation occurs when an NSView has more than about 100 subviews. A Text widget with thousands of lines of text could easily contain more than 100 embedded windows. In fact, while the original Cocoa port of Tk did use the NSButton object, which is derived from NSView, as the basis for its Tk Buttons, that was changed in order to improve performance. Moreover, the low level routine used for scrolling on macOS, namely [NSView scrollrect:by], does not provide any damage information. So TkScrollWindow needs to work differently on macOS. Since it would be inefficient to iterate through all embedded windows in a Text widget, looking for those which meet the scrolling area, the damage region constructed by TkScrollWindow contains only the difference between the source and destination rectangles for the scrolling. The embedded windows are redrawn within the DisplayText function by some conditional code which is only used for macOS. 6.0 Virtual events on macOS 10.14 and later ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The 10.14 release added support for system appearance changes, including a "Dark Mode" that renders all window frames and menus in dark colors. Tk 8.6.11 provides three virtual events <>, <> and <>, to allow you to update your Tk app's appearance when the system appearance changes. These events are generated in [NSView effectiveAppearanceChanged], which is called by the Apple window manager when the General Preferences is changed either by switching between Light Mode and Dark Mode or by changing the Accent Color or Highlight Color. The <> virtual event has a data string which can be accessed with the %d substitution. The format of the data string is that it consists of 6 words: "Appearance XXXX Accent YYYY Highlight ZZZZ" For example, the following code will print the current appearance name, accent color and highlight color when the <> virtual event fires: bind . <> { array set data [split %d] puts " Appearance: $data(Appearance)" puts " Accent: $data(Accent)" puts " Highlight: $data(Highlight)\n" } 7.0 Mac Services ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ With 8.6.10, Tk supports the Mac's NSServices API, documented at https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SysServices/introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/10000101-SW1 and in TIP 536 and Tk's man page. Tk presents a simple, straightforward API to implement the Services functionality. The Tk implementation of the NSServices API is intended for standalone applications, such as one wrapped by the standalone version of Wish and re-named into a different application. In particular such an application would specify its own unique CFBundleIdentifier in its Info.plist file. During development, however, if Wish itself is being used as the receiver, it may be necessary to take some care to ensure that the correct version of Wish.app is available as a receiver of NSServices data. When one macOS app uses NSServices to send data to another app that is not running, LaunchServices will launch the receiver. LaunchServices assumes that the CFBundleIdentifier uniquely identifies an app among all of the apps installed on a system. But this may not be the case for Wish.app if, for example, you have compiled Tk from source at some time in the past. In that case the Tk build directory will contain its own copy of Wish.app that will be visible to LaunchServices. It may be necessary when testing your app to take some steps to ensure that LaunchServices is launching the correct Wish.app. Instructions for doing this are provided below. The command line tool which manages the LaunchServices database has an amazingly unwieldy path name. So, first, run this command: alias lsregister='/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister' Then you can reset the LaunchServices database like this: $ lsregister -kill $ lsregister -seed To find out which versions of Wish.app have been located by LaunchServices, run: $ lsregister -dump | grep path | grep Wish If more than one version of Wish is showing up in this list, eliminate all of the unintended targets by running lsregister -u /path/to/bad/Wish.app Continue this until only the correct version of Wish shows up in the list.