Launching IDLE with the newest Aqua Tcl/Tk (8.4.4 with 
batteries included) leads to the error message 
"SetFrontProcess failed,-606" in the terminal window when I 
try to click on the IDLE window.

Is this a Tcl/Tk issue or a Tkinter problem?  I have tried to 
wipe as much of Tcl/Tk from my system and re-install and it 
still comes up (I could be having residual issues from my 
previous 8.3.3 which also had the same error).

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Brett,
I need a few more details. Did you use the existing IDLE from 2.3 
installed via PackMan, or a privately-built one? Or did you run 
from the command line? If so, you did remember to use 
"pythonw", not "python"?

If you can repeat this problem using pythonw from the command 
line I would like a transcript, please.

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This is a Darwin build built from CVS source (--with-pydebug --
prefix=$HOME/cvs_code --enable-ipv6 --enable-unicode=ucs4).  
There is no pythonw to run (I thought that was a Windows-only 
thing?) and I have never used (nor know how to use) PackMan.

I executed from the command-line by passing the script "idle" in 
my bin directory to my installed copy of CVS Python.

If this turns out to be because of the Unicode switch again I am 
going to go nuts.  =)

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Brett,
this is a known issue. On MacOSX you can only run GUI programs 
if they are embedded in a ".app" bundle. If you do a framework 
build of Python (see instructions in Mac/OSX/README) then in 
addition to the "python" executable you will also get "pythonw" 
which runs your script in such a .app bundle.

With a normal unix build this is conceivably doable, but you are on 
your own.

An alternative (but I wouldn't recommend it) is to use X11-Tk: as 
this isn't an Aqua program it doesn't suffer from the .app problem.