Re: [PATCH 1/2] gitk: Initialize msgcat before first use

Pat Thoyts [off-list ref] writes:

Bernt Hansen [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

The error text generated when your version of Tcl is too old is
translated with msgcat (mc) before msgcat is initialized.  This
causes Tcl to abort with:

   Error in startup script: invalid command name "mc"

We now initialize msgcat first before we check the Tcl version.  Msgcat
is available since Tcl 8.1.

This doesn't quite work. [file normalize] was introduced with Tcl 8.4
and when I test this by starting it using Tcl 8.3 I get an error:
 "bad option "normalize": must be atime, attributes, channels..."
from line 11014. It is probably sufficient to just drop the [file
normalize] here. On Windows $argv0 is fully qualified and 
[file dirname] works ok on it. By removing the [file normalize] I get
the expected error dialog when testing with 8.3.
However, on Windows we actually get a better looking result by not
catching the [package require Tcl 8.4] and just letting Tk bring up a
standard message box with the version conflict error message.

Well, actually if show_error just used tk_messageBox it would look
better on Windows.

You're right.  Thanks for catching this.  When I tested this code I
bumped the version number temporarily to 8.5 instead of downgrading TK
to 8.3.

The problem I was trying to fix was show_error using mc internally
before it was initialized.  Maybe it would be better to give show_error
an optional parameter that controls calling mc - so that the call for
the version check can just bypass the mc translation of the text and OK
buttons.  With this approach the code I moved around can just stay where
it is and all of the existing calls to show_error will use the default
parameter setting which invokes mc.

Would that be a better approach?

-Bernt