This morning I added a couple of annotations to a piece of text in the Research folder imported from a blog (originally a web archive, then converted to text using the menu item).
The annotations were red when I created them but at some point during the edit they changed to grey without me doing anything that might have triggered this apart from turning Ghost mode on then off again.
Now all new annotations in the project (not just this document) are grey.
I changed the colour of the existing annotations to red using the colour palette. However the red colour doesn’t stick - the annotation remains red only until I move the cursor into the annotation, whereupon it switches back to black.This is completely reproduceable.
I’ve done a bit more experimenting to try to isolate the problem, and this is what I’ve concluded: the unwanted “black annotations” appear when I am using a system-wide text style selected from the ruler. If I start a completely new project and do not use that style (instead using Scrivener’s default text style), annotations are red. If I start a new project and set the text to my preferred style, annotations are black and the other instabilities described above also apply.
Keith, you have mentioned that the problem may be related to text that is styled black rather than having no color applied. However, I don’t know how to remove the color attribute once it’s applied: there is no obvious way to do that from the Font panel (is there?). For the moment I’ve just recreated a new version of my preferred style, saved it to the system-wide style favorites, and it seems to work fine.
An obvious next step would be to create a new style and explicitly set the font color to black (perhaps by setting it to something else, then changing it back) and see if the problem can be reproduced. Unfortunately I’m out of time at the moment.
Hi, sorry, forgot to follow this up. I recently isolated the problem and fixed it. It is caused by the underlying text having a colour associated with it (as I say, usually black text has no colour associated with it, but it is possible to have black associated with it). In the OS X text system, when you click in coloured text, it updates the colour in the colour panel (even if it’s not visible), which in turn sends a “change colour” message back to the text - and in the case of an annotation, this changes the annotation colour. All a bit silly. I’ve fixed it by changing it so that if the change colour message tries to change the colour of an annotation to the same colour as the underlying text, it doesn’t do anything (thus doesn’t change the colour) - given that it’s highly unlikely you would want an annotation to be the same colour as the text around it, this should be a decent solution.
This will be in 1.54.
2.0 will offer a way of removing a colour from text. Until then, the workaround is this: select the text and then Edit > Paste and Match Style in somewhere like TextEdit (or a clean Scriv doc), then paste that in to replace the original text.
I get black annotations (in 1.51) even in newly created Scrivener documents.
I do nothing special. I create a document in the binder, I open it, I write something (in Optima 12pt, which appears black), I hit Shift.Command-A to invoke an annotation, I write and get the annotation in its bubble, but not red anymore, but black.
This happens even with I quit Scrivener, restart it, create a new project and write in the first document there: the annotation remains black.
I might be wrong, but is it possible this has something to do with the upgrade to OS X 10.5.8 ? (Some time has passed since I last used the annotation feature, but I remember I’ve got the usual red things with the actual version.)
I’ve got the same problem as this - my annotations are grey now and I can’t seem to get them back to red. Is there a fix for this? The problem occurred when I selected a document and did Documents>Convert>Formatting to compile style. That’s definitely what ‘broke’ it…
How to fix - I’ve looked at your reply above Keith and am running 1.5.4 so not sure what to do…
Yes, it turns out 1.54 didn’t quite fix all instances of this. Did you download 1.54 on the day of release or only recently? I found and fixed this, but now I can’t remember if I re-uploaded 1.54 with the fix or if the fix is still waiting to be included in a 1.55 update, sorry! The only way to fix it after all the annotations have turned to grey, though, is to go through them and set them back to another colour, I’m afraid.
Hi - I think I downloaded it on the day - can’t be sure though. I don’t mind going back and changing the grey ones but I’d like to somehow reset the default back to red and I can’t seem to do it. I’ve changed an annotation colour manually to red and that doesn’t fix future annotations - they still default to grey. I’ve renamed the project in finder and that doesn’t fix it. Any other work around to reset the default annotation colour to red?
thanks
simon
update - have just redowloaded 1.5.4 and it’s a workaround. Now when I change the colour of an annotation it changes all future annotations to that colour. that’s good enough for me! thanks
Simon