Bug 17835 - Removing master/slave terminology from tcltk

[hturner]

Bug 17835 identified two places where R employed master/slave terminology: in the {parallel} package and in the {tcltk} package. The parallel package was updated in R 4.0.3 to avoid this terminology, changes to {tcltk} needed to wait for upstream changes in Tcl/Tk.

Tcl/Tk was updated in version 8.6, see Tcl Improvement Proposals 581, providing aliases for Tcl and Tk commands/subcommands that use master/slave terminology. So a patch can now be prepared to close this issue, updating src/library/tcltk/R/Tk.R and src/library/tcltk/man/TkCommands.Rd as required.

Currently Tcl/Tk 8.6 is the oldest version for easy download on https://www.tcl-lang.org/software/tcltk/download.html or via the sites listed on https://www.tcl-lang.org/software/tcltk/bindist.html. So perhaps {tcltk} in R 4.6 could require Tcl/Tk ≥ 8.6, vs Tcl/Tk ≥ 8.4 as currently. But for now the old commands/subcommands can be used conditional on Tcl/Tk version, since they have not been deprecated.

[EllaKaye]

Patch submitted! https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17835

[mmaechler]

But it only deprecates one of the 3 *.slaves() : https://bugs.r-project.org/attachment.cgi?id=3514&action=diff
(as I also wrote here a few hours ago: https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17835#c12 ), i.e.,
you should really fix and upload a new patch.

[mmaechler]

and we got a new patch alright, thank you.
I have now committed a slightly more sophisticated version, such that the deprecation warning is only signalled if tclVersion() indicates that Tcl/Tk is at least at version 8.6 -- so I will close the bugzilla issue now, with thanks to @EllaKaye and also Erin Hodgess. https://bugs.r-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17835