Menus blink and flicker

[itsayellow]

I'm using xschem (commit e9c927d, but I believe this was still happening on the latest release) inside a Docker container with Centos 9 stream, and then sending to XWindows on a Mac using XQuartz as the X server.

I've always been seeing this problem where the menus and menu items blink on and off (text and empty space where text was) as I move the mouse over menus. Sometimes, after I've been using the program for a while, the menubar items start blinking really rapidly as if they are reprinting over and over again.

One thought: Is it possible I need to compile differently, or using different X libraries?

Here is a screen recording of the "slow blink" where mousing over items in a menu turns some on or off.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BfdFyf4kaoPrG7SvtCNF6rUJP_9xiZfi/view?usp=sharing

I couldn't capture the fast blink behavior, because it only happens sporadically.

[StefanSchippers]

Looks like it is a rendering problem on the Xserver. I have 4 different laptops, from very old and small with atom processors up to corei7. Non none of these machines I see this issue, even in cross configurations (user on one machine, xschem running on another machine).

Try to go into the XQuartz preferences and try to disable any hardware / 3D acceleration if possible.

[itsayellow]

I looked but I can't find any acceleration options for XQuartz.

It's weird because I don't see glitches like this with other X programs.

Is there possibly some compile switch I could alter that might change something with the menu display? Or might I be missing some optional dev library that causes the compilation process to fall-back to some lesser library?

[StefanSchippers]

Ok try to start this application:
/usr/share/doc/tk8.6-doc/demos/widget
If you don't have it install the tk8.6-doc package. (it is useful anyway as it contains the man pages).
start it with:
wish /usr/share/doc/tk8.6-doc/demos/widget
or
wish8.6 /usr/share/doc/tk8.6-doc/demos/widget
(or whatever tcl-tk version you have on the system).

see details in video.

output.mp4

[itsayellow]

Centos 9 inside of Docker with XQuartz on mac: OK, I guess it's a tk thing, possibly with the combination centos, or xquartz. I see the same issue with the menus in the tk menu demo. Certain pieces of text in the menus disappear and reappear on mouse-over. Sometimes menu label, sometimes hotkey description, etc.

Ubuntu 24.04: I tried the same demo on Ubuntu 24.04 inside of a Parallels virtual machine, and it seems to work ok. I don't see the menu items occasionally go blank. I do see the whole menu bar blink as I mouse to a different menu, so maybe there's some particular mouseover behavior that is a little funny that goes horribly wrong in certain implementations.

For other readers, on my Centos 9 system, you can find widget at path /usr/share/tk8.6/demos/widget installed as part of the regular 'tk' package.

[StefanSchippers]

Looks like some Expose events get lost and the toolkit (Tk) does not redraw the image.

I see other issues with the same problem:
XQuartz/XQuartz#423

[itsayellow]

Sadly, the last commit to XQuartz is over 2 years ago, so it's not really being maintained. It may be time to find a new Xserver for macOS

[StefanSchippers]

May be you could try the 'macports' way as described here:
https://www.xquartz.org/releases/index.html