Tk 8.5 crashes when composing character typed in any text widget

Originator:ned.deily
Number:rdar://14198205 Date Originated:18-Jun-2013 07:11PM
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:OS X Product Version:10.9
Classification: Reproducible:
 
Tk 8.5.9, shipped with 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9/13A476u, crashes when a composing character is typed in a text widget.  This causes data loss and prevents users from entering various international characters in Tk-based applications shipped with OS X, like wish8.5 or Python's IDLE.  

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Sources, select "U.S. Extended".
2. From a terminal shell, type /usr/bin/idle2.7
3. In the "Python Shell" window that appears, click the mouse/trackpad so that insertion point is after the ">>> " in the window.
4. Press Option-u and observe Tk crash.

Expected Results:
No crash!  For example, Option-u followed by a should produce รค.

Actual Results:
Crash with no opportunity for user to recover text entered.

Regression:
This is a critical bug in the Cocoa backport of Tk 8.5.  It has been subsequently fixed in later releases of Tk 8.5, which is now at 8.5.14.  Other critical bugs in the Cocoa version of Tk 8.5 have also been fixed since 8.5.9.  As it stands, the versions of Tk 8.5 shipped with OS X 10.6 through 10.8 and the Mavericks preview are critically broken.  Tcl 8.5 and Tk 8.5 should be updated to 8.5.14 to take advantage of these fixes.

Notes:
Note that as of Tk 8.5.13, the Cocoa Tk 8.5 backport is now integrated into the Tk 8.5 mainline (no longer a separate branch in a different repo) and so should be buildable from the standard source release tarballs.  (The development repos have moved to Fossil repos available here:  http://core.tcl.tk)

(2013-11-27) An update: Tcl and Tk are now at 8.5.15. Since those releases, one additional critical problem for 10.9 has been fixed but not yet in a release: https://core.tcl.tk/tk/tktview?name=53f7a1b553

Comments

Update:

An update: Tcl and Tk are now at 8.5.15. Since those releases, one additional critical problem for 10.9 has been fixed but not yet in a release: https://core.tcl.tk/tk/tktview?name=53f7a1b553

By ned.deily at Nov. 27, 2013, 11:06 p.m. (reply...)

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