VMD-L Mailing List

From: Brian Kidd (bkidd_at_u.washington.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 15 2007 - 14:57:16 CDT

Hi Marc,

Dan Gordon suggested installing the latest tcl/tk from version
tracker in a post from late May 2007. To quote his post:

> Hello,
>
> For those intel mac users who, like me, are annoyed by dropped
> keystrokes and other buggy behaviour of TkColsole when using VMD: I
> noticed that there is a new version (8.4.14) of tcl/tk available at
> VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/
> 16923). Installation of the new version seems to fix the problems.

Installing the new version actually has worked very well for me and
now I can use the tk console without any of the annoying console
problems such as missing characters during typing or having the
console window freeze. Note that Dan also advised caution because in
his experience the several of the VMD plugins crashed. I'm not sure
what this means exactly and I haven't seen this behavior on my
system. However, maybe this is because I'm running tcl scripts that
don't rely on plugins and don't use the plugins very often. For what
it's worth, I'm using VMD 1.8.6 on a mactel.

-Brian

On Jun 15, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Marc Baaden wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> quoting an older message, I wonder whether any progress has been made
> on the Tk Console front for Mac users. The buggy behavior can be very
> annoying, in particular when the console just remains stuck for an
> hour
> or so..
> ..anything one can do to try help debug this? Did anybody find a
> workaround?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Marc
>
>>> From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
>>> Date: Wed Jan 17 2007 - 15:59:16 CST
>>> In reply to: Eric Peterson: "Tk console issues"
>>> Eric,
>>> I've witnessed a number of strange behaviors with the MacOS X
>>> version of Tk running on the x86 macs, some of which were pointed
>>> out by other observant users like yourself. I'm planning on
>>> building
>>> an updated version of Tk shortly to see if the newer versions have
>>> corrected these issues. The FLTK toolkit used by the main VMD
>>> graphical interfaces also has a few small bugs on MacOS X Intel.
>>> The problems I've noticed on the x86 macs include unusual mouse
>>> cursor bitmap images, dropped keystrokes in Tk windows, incorrect
>>> mouse focus behavior when switching windows, and internal Tk
>>> debugging messages being printed under some circumstances. I've
>>> previously tried using the version of Tk that Apple ships, but
>>> their
>>> version is based on an older Tk release and has more bugs than the
>>> version I compiled myself. I'll have to get back to you on this
>>> after I test the newest Tk release and see if things have improved
>>> on this front.
>>> John Stone
>>> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> --
> Dr. Marc Baaden - Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris
> mailto:baaden_at_smplinux.de - http://www.baaden.ibpc.fr
> FAX: +33 15841 5026 - Tel: +33 15841 5176 ou +33 609 843217
>
>
>