[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Bug#780003: tk8.6: antialiasing in wish8.5/8.6 make gitk unreadable dark background

[David Fries]

Package: tk8.6
Version: 8.6.2-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Debian jessie no longer packages tk8.4, and 8.5/8.6 versions of tk
enable antialiasing some of the time, which is causing text to be
nearly unreadable especially with a dark background.  This is with
gitk and a dark background using the courier font for the diff area.
The font is the default font selected with gitk.  I took screen shots
of the same gitk script running on the same system with three versions
of tk 8.4, 8.5, and 8.6 with my normal dark configuration and the
stock light option.

https://plus.google.com/114119938972260211379/posts/7FH11KdgDCq

With the dark background the newer versions of tk take 28% more
(vertical) space to
display the same text, and yet for the dark background it's very very
difficult to read, like it is blurred out to the point it is blurry
and blends with the background color.

The white background takes the same additional amount of space, but I
would say it's a matter of opinion if it is more or less readable, I
would say less, but not overly so.

Here is my .gitk config if it matters.  Note depending on the gitk 
version some colors are not ideal for the dark theme, this bug report
is about font display, not gitk color selection.

.gitk

set mainfont {Helvetica 8}
set textfont {Courier 8}
set uifont {Helvetica 9 bold}
set tabstop 8
set findmergefiles 0
set maxgraphpct 50
set maxwidth 16
set cmitmode patch
set wrapcomment none
set autoselect 0
set autosellen 40
set showneartags 1
set hideremotes 0
set showlocalchanges 1
set datetimeformat {%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}
set limitdiffs 1
set uicolor grey85
set uifgcolor black
set want_ttk 1
set override_ttk 0
set bgcolor black
set fgcolor white
set colors {green red lightblue magenta darkgrey lightgray orange}
set diffcolors {red green cyan}
set markbgcolor #404060
set diffcontext 3
set selectbgcolor gray50
set filebgcolor #aaaaaa
set extdifftool meld
set perfile_attrs 0
set geometry(main) 700x488+0+230
set geometry(state) normal
set geometry(topwidth) 696
set geometry(topheight) 160
set geometry(pwsash0) "372 2"
set geometry(pwsash1) "574 2"
set geometry(botwidth) 503
set geometry(botheight) 308
set permviews {}


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.19.0+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: unable to detect

Versions of packages tk8.6 depends on:
ii  libc6           2.19-15
ii  libfontconfig1  2.11.0-6.3
ii  libfreetype6    2.5.2-3
ii  libtcl8.6       8.6.2+dfsg-1
ii  libtk8.6        8.6.2-1
ii  libx11-6        2:1.6.2-3
ii  libxext6        2:1.3.3-1
ii  libxft2         2.3.2-1
ii  libxss1         1:1.2.2-1
ii  zlib1g          1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1

Versions of packages tk8.6 recommends:
ii  konsole [x-terminal-emulator]  4:4.14.2-1
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emulator]    312-2

tk8.6 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information