Matt,

You should NOT need to compile perl/Tk  -- it should be included in
the installer.  You had a working system that somehow got corrupted
(though  I do not understand how that happened, as a horae_update
should have done absolutely nothing).  How did you originally get
Ifeffit installed on your OSX system?

well... I think I installed from source and then I upgraded it using horae_update. Everything went well until I updated the OSX to 10.4. After that, I "think" but I am not really sure, that I tried the dmg installer for 10.4 and so I am afraid that that could be the problem. On top of this, the horae_updtate did not work any more and so I deleted (...) the Ifeffit folder from my applications folder...

I just tried to rebuild from source doing the following:

Procedure to install Ifeffit, Athena, Artemis etc on a Powerbook G4 running the latestversion of Mac OSX 10.4.3 (Tiger)

1) Remove the /sw directory
2) Install Fink
a. Go to http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php?phpLang=en and follow instructions 1-4
b. Run the command: fink scanpackages; fink index
c. update fink by running: fink selfupdate. When prompted, select option (1), "rsync". This will automatically update the fink package
3) Install additional programs
a. fink install g77
4) Install additional programs in the Fink unstable branch:
a.
edit /sw/etc/fink.conf, add unstable/main  and unstable/crypto to the Trees: line, and then run fink selfupdate; fink index; fink scanpackages.
5) install the Ifeffit binary from ifeffit-1.2.5a_Mac10.3.dmg
6) install Perl/Tk from source
a. download Tk-804.027.tar.gz from a CPAN site: wget http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/NI-S/Tk-804.027.tar.gz
b. unpack Tk-804.027: tar xvzf Tk-804.027.tar.gz
c. change line 2809 of pTk/mTk/tixGeneric/tixHList.c  from '#if 0' to '#if 1'
d. build Perl/Tk: perl Makefile.PL ; make


At this point I get the following error message:

cd pTk && make DEFINE=""
cc -c  -I.. -I/usr/X11R6/include -I. -Ibitmaps -I/usr/X11R6/include -g -pipe -fno-common -DPERL_DARWIN -no-cpp-precomp -fno-strict-aliasing -I/usr/local/include -Os   -DVERSION=\"804.027\" -DXS_VERSION=\"804.027\"  "-I/System/Library/Perl/5.8.6/darwin-thread-multi-2level/CORE"   -Wall -Wno-implicit-int -Wno-comment -Wno-unused -D__USE_FIXED_PROTOTYPES__ tixHList.c
tixHList.c: In function 'NewElement':
tixHList.c:2811: error: assignment of read-only location
tixHList.c:2812: error: assignment of read-only location
make[1]: *** [tixHList.o] Error 1
make: *** [pTk/libpTk.a] Error 2

Paul... where are you??? :-)
I am sure someone will be able to guide me through this winding road...
Stefano