TIP:            172
Title:          Improve UNIX Tk Look and Feel
Version:        $Revision: 1.4 $
Author:         David N. Welton <davidw@dedasys.com>
State:          Withdrawn
Type:           Project
Vote:           No voting
Created:        08-Mar-2004
Post-History:   
Tcl-Version:    8.5
Obsoleted-By:	248

~ Abstract

In the spirit of "worse is better", this TIP proposes a simple way to
notably improve Tk's look and feel for the 8.5 release of Tk.  It does
not fix all the problems, and won't make Tk look like whatever toolkit
is "native" on the user's machine (Gtk or Qt), but will at least
improve the current situation.

~ Rationale

This TIP is needed because people continue to complain about Tk's
outdated look.  This TIP, being extremely easy to implement, should be
put into place while we await a technically superior solution such as
the Tile project.

~ Proposed Change

The two things that ought to happen are as follows:

 1. The code now located in the tklib "style" module should be tweaked to       further
    improve its look (for instance Pat Thoyts suggests a few
    additional improvements at the bottom of the page), and included
    as the default look for Tk on Unix in the 8.5 release.  Credit
    goes to Jeremy Collins and the Tk revitalization project for most
    of the code, I believe.

 2. A loadable package should be distributed with Tk that reverts the
    look and feel to "classic Tk", so that "package require classictk"
    would be the only change necessary to not use the new look.

~ Copyright

This document has been placed in the public domain.