Bugs with "Show colors"

[Jenny_Y8S]

Hi

From a non bug-hunt post:

@Jenny_Y8S

I encountered a bug with the colouring of comments:

First up, I’m using the “show colours” option as I wanted a brighter red. So my workflow is to create a comment and if needed right click it in the inspector, choose show colours, select the crayola tab and select Maraschino. I’ve also occasionally selected snow, so I’ve got white > yellow > red as my severity of comments.

I earlier selected a comment and changed it to red, but it changed to black. Then whenever I clicked in a new comment it too turned black (just by clicking it in the inspector). The black was visible in the inspector and the editor. I left this strange (click to change colour) mode by clicking menus and within the binder, not sure which had the desired effect.

I tried changing the first black comment to red, but all that managed to do was change one word within it a red text background.

I cleared most of the issue by changing them to yellow and then back to the Maraschino. This worked perfectly in the inspector, but my first comment was still black in the main document. No matter what colour I changed it to, the inspector showed it correct but the editor had it on a black background.

I restarted Scrivener but it was still there and I still couldn’t lose the black in the editor by changing the colour of the comment.

I cured the black background by highlighting the comment text in the editor and unhighlighting it.

This still left me with a single red highlighted word within the comment in the inspector (Could be seen as the red highlight didn’t match the comment colour gradient), so I copy and pasted the text out with a match formatting and that cured it.

I’ve also had other issues with the “show colors” pop-up. I’m not writing “This is exactly how to replicate it steps” here, but basically I’ve had several occasions where it stops working (I select a colour and it doesn’t change what I was trying to change) I think it’s due to me clicking on the text again once the dialogue is open.

For example I pasted in a couple of tables earlier and wanted to set the border colour. It worked once, but without closing the table or colour picker dialogues it then started changing the colour of the text and not the border (I was trying to find a “just-visible” grey).

Basically I think the colour picker can forget what it is you’re trying to change.

Make sense? A bug?

[KB]

The OS X colour picker is notoriously tricky. I sends its messages to the first responder, but all sorts of things can mess it up, because it’s hard-wired in so many odd ways, so it can cause issues wherever it’s used. If you can find a particular reproduction case, though, let me know, as I haven’t seen this and can’t reproduce it off-the-bat.

Thanks!

All the best,
Keith

[Jenny_Y8S]

Here’s an example that I can reproduce every time. Not very likely to occur in the real world, but it’s an example.

Enter some text
Select it
Shift-Cmd-8 to create a comment

Enter the text for the comment
Right click the top of comment (“Comment:”)
Select show colors

Click in the text editor window*
Choose your colour
<Comment colour doesn’t change>

*It’s this step of doing something else rather than immediately selecting the colour that causes the issue. It’s as if the action is causing the first responder reference to be subverted.

[Jenny_Y8S]

Create a table using Format / Table / Table

Click on the colour of the cell border Click in the text editor* Pick a colour from the colour picker

*Again it’s the doing something else which breaks the link between the picker and it’s target.

It’s worth saying that I don’t consider this behaviour to be a major issue. If the colour dialogue was closed when you click back to the editor then it couldn’t even be regarded as a bug.

[KB]

Hi,

Both of these instances describe expected behaviour. The comment pane must be first responder for the colour panel messages to get sent to it. In both of these examples, you click into the editor, so the editor takes first responder status at that point. From there on, colour panel messages will be sent to the text, which will generally affect text foreground colour. That’s not a bug, but how the entire Cocoa view system is set up - each view can use the colour panel in a different way.

All the best,
Keith