#443 SciDAVis color problem on MacOS 12 (Monterey)
Hi,
I just started using SciDAVis 2.8 on MacOS 12.6.1 (Monterey) and have discovered that the two don't play well together with respect to the colors used for text and background in some of the panels, such as the Fit Wizard, or even the About box.
With the Panel and Panel text colors set to white and black, respectively, the text in some panel fields is nearly impossible to see, because it is white on a white background. This is how the About box appears, irrespective of the color settings. If the Panel colot is set to black, and the text color to white, most of the fields are OK, but some are white on a very light gray. The best settings seem to be a light gray for the panel color and black for the text, but this is far from ideal.
I think that this problem likely comes from changes in how MacOS handles colors for different kinds of objects, with an emphasis on dark backgrounds. If anything can be done to make SciDAVis compatible with these changes, it would be greatly appreciated! Perhaps it just needs a fresh compile using the latest XCode.
Thanks,
David
I think you forgot to attach the snapshot of the About box that you mentioned.
This is how it appears on my system: Monterey 12.6.1
Here is a snapshot of the About box, as it appears on my system, I see this on two computers of mine, but I just checked on another system and it looks fine! I think that ther must be something else installed on my systems that is causing this. I will try to figure it out and report back.
Thanks!
David
I think that I figured it out! The problem seems to be related to the dark mode that is now an option on MacOS (and the default, I think).
If SciDAVis is launched with dark mode on, the colors are mixed up, as seen in the About box posted earlier. I had checked earlier to see if dark mode might be the problem, and I was thrown of track because changing to light mode when SciDAVis was open didn't change anything. But, if light mode is on when the progam is started, the colors are fine! And, if dark mode is turned on while the program is running, the colors in the program change appropriately.
It would be nice if SciDAVis behaved properly when launched in dark mode, but the situation is manageable once you know how!
David
I don't recall any specific code in SciDAVis that deals with dark
mode. It's not something that is relevant on other (non-Mac)
platforms.
Most likely, this is something that is handled internally by Qt, so
this might be a Qt issue. Maybe Qt needs to be updated.
On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 08:44:13PM -0000, David Goldenberg wrote:
--
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpcoder@hpcoders.com.au
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
Russell,
I have found a little bit of information about QT and dark mode. It seems as though an option for dark mode became functional with Qt 5.12.2, but implementing it in applications requires a bit of extra code, as described here:
https://successfulsoftware.net/2021/03/31/how-to-add-a-dark-theme-to-your-qt-application/
But, the even better news is that Mac applications can be set to use only the light mode with a small addition ot the info.plist file. This is described near the bottom of the page linked to above.
I have tried this with SciDAVis, and it works! I am attaching the modified info.plist. Although it would be nice to have the application respond to the change in system display mode, this makes things entirely workable.
David
Last edit: David Goldenberg 2022-12-21
https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis/issues/29#issuecomment-1552149649