[R] problems with R and tckl/tk on Mac OS X

Bill Northcott
Sun, 01 Oct 2006 02:38:38 -0000

On 30/09/2006, at 8:00 PM, Rob J Goedman wrote:
> Thanks for catching this question. I'd missed Ingo's original
email.
>
> Rcmdr does need X.11 and Tcl/Tk, although it uses the versions that
> come with Mac OS 10.4. Hence, as Alex indicates, there is no need to
> separately install these.
>
> Ingo, if you can't get it to work using John's link, let me know
> where you get stuck.  R-Sig-Mac is an alias dedicated to Mac OS
> specific questions.

1.  R-sig-mac is the place to go for these sorts of questions.  This
issue is being discussed there right now.

2.  The instructions at http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/
Rcmdr/installation-notes.html are not correct and will mislead you.

3.  The problems with Tcl/Tk are caused by the nice Aqua GUI.  The
tcl/tk package or any of its dependencies such as Rcmdr can be built
on MacOS in one of two ways:
       a.  use the Apple included (in 10.4.x) AquaTk.
       b.  use an X11 version of Tk

Packages built as a. cannot be run from within the R GUI but will
launch happily from a command line.  The problem is that AquaTk
thinks it is the only GUI for the app and fights with the R GUI for
possession of the menu bar and system events.  They will work if you
run R from a shell instead of the GUI.

Packages built as b. can be run from inside the R GUI.  So this is
the standard for the CRAN binary distributions.

The current R binary (2.3.1) includes an X11 Tcl/Tk.  Make sure that
it is installed.

Bill Northcott