Netnewswire: In dark mode, selected sources are unreadable in fullscreen, slide-over side bar.

[joaofrgomes]

Basically, when the app is in fullscreen mode, the sidebar is hidden and macOS is in Dark Mode, the currently selected source is unreadable because the highlight colour is converted into white instead of gray, and the text is not inverted, thus becoming a white-on-white unreadable rectangle.

The issue goes away when the app is in light mode, however.

Also, after tabbing between fields, it does indeed become readable, even in Dark Mode.

[brentsimmons]

Good catch! This sure looks like a macOS bug. There might be a way to work around it, though.

[joaofrgomes]

Oh, ok. To be fair, I had never used slide-over sidebars in fullscreen before; seeing how I'm used to Feedly, and having quite a lot of readable area as articles open on top of the article list, I decided to try this config and it works really nicely on a 13'' screen (on my 27'' iMac I probably won't bother at all).

By the way, maybe you could add a “Show (hide) sidebar button” and have the first flexible space snap the buttons to the edge of the sidebar, à la Mail.app? Just a thought, as it'd make it more similar to first-party apps (and NetNewsWire is already leagues ahead of the competition when it comes to that, but why not going the extra inch? ;) ).

By the way, I forgot to add that I'm running macOS Mojave 10.14.6, as I like to keep current.

[brentsimmons]

I don’t think we can snap those buttons the way Mail does — I haven’t seen anything in the toolbar API for that. I strongly suspect that Mail is using private API for this.

[joaofrgomes]

Ahh, yes, Apple does that a lot. Wow, if so, they've been holding on to it for very long. I remember that functionality from maybe as far back as Mail.app v.2, in Tiger (back when I used NetNewsWire v.3, heh :P )! In any case, the “show (hide)” button should be nice enough, as would be that highlight fix. ;)

I'm really enjoying the app, and I can't wait for Feedly sync and those iOS and iPadOS versions. Keep up the good work!

[michelf]

I think Mail is simply changing the max width of the first flexible space item dynamically as you move the splitter: you take the width of the sidebar, subtract some fixed amount for the toolbar margin, subtract the width of any item before the flexible space, and that gives you your max width. I did something like this once, only it wasn't with a spacer item.

[brentsimmons]

Right — but I don’t think we have any way to affect the width of a flexible space item in the toolbar.

[joaofrgomes]

So… sadly, even though michelf is probably also right, they are indeed using a private API for that, no? That's Occam's Razor right there; if there isn't a way to expressly do that, it's the most logical explanation.

Interesting discussion. It's at times like these that I wish I was a developer myself (even with all the technical limitations and frustration that may come from them). ;)

Also, it's very refreshing to discuss these things with Mac devs at heart, who really like to polish their UX and UI to an unbelievable sheen. For instance, my latest dealings with the team at Serif when it comes to these details have been a bit… frustrating and disheartening, to say the least.

Anyway, Brent, I'd much rather see you guys stick to the public APIs and a fully HIG-compliant implementation, that feels almost first-party (even if you can't use those pesky private APIs aha), than muck around in weird shenanigans just to implement stuff that, indeed, is not a priority. That's what makes me love simple but polished and focused apps like this one. I'm so eager to see what you will come up with now that you have a solid base finally out in the wild. :)

[brentsimmons]

I tried a bunch of things. Hammering on it to re-draw, basically. I got nothing. I don’t know what this is going to take.

It’s definitely a macOS bug. Maybe it will get fixed in Catalina.

Removing it from the 5.0.1 milestone.

[joaofrgomes]

Oh well. Perhaps we could escalate this directly to Apple, then. I still have Feedback Assistant here in my system, even though I'm not running a public beta or anything right now, and it may work.

In any case, I've been itching to try Catalina and check how Music behaves with an external library, as that is the config I'm using right now on my main machine, so I might as well see if the bug still lingers, then, and flag it appropriately if it does. :)

Ohhh, I should also add something that I, whoopsie, forgot to mention: because I'm still using a non-Retina MacBook Pro and also a non-Retina external screen with my iMac, I have that somewhat hacky sub-pixel font rendering turned on (you know, that remnant of the proper one from High Sierra and earlier, that was deprecated in Mojave but can still be set with that hidden flag: defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO). Perhaps that has something to do with it? [Edit: nope, it doesn't…]

Mail.app doesn't exhibit the same behaviour, but Finder windows and Contacts.app, as a matter of fact, do (newer apps, such as Notes.app, interestingly, do not). So your theory that this is a widespread, macOS issue checks out! Now, the only thing missing is seeing whether turning off sub-pixel rendering fixes it [Edit: nope, it doesn't.] (not that I'll do that in the long term, as I enjoy having my text as crisp as possible no matter what, but at least you'll know that this won't affect many users). [Edit: well, it will probably affect other users, and across many, if not all apps, so… yep, not bothering too much with this is the right call]

[vincode-io]

I stumbled across this issue and am closing it since there is nothing we can do about this macOS bug.

[joaofrgomes]

Hi Maurice,

I had completely forgotten about this. The latest stable build, v. 5.1.1 (3012), no longer exhibits this behaviour under macOS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H2), so Apple likely fixed whatever was causing it on their end anyway.

In any case, thanks for the heads up.

No dia 18/10/2020, às 21:39, Maurice Parker [e-mail] escreveu:

I stumbled across this issue and am closing it since there is nothing we can do about this macOS bug.

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