chromaticbytes.com

[twoisland]

I no longer see shades among in the color pickers when I use the system preferences application, specifically, the Desktop portion of the "Desktop and Screensaver" pref pane. Prior to 10.6 I was able to select a color using the Shades palette for a desktop picture. Shades does appear among the choices in Pages, Nisus Writer Pro, Omnigraffle Pro, Microsoft Word.

[rclair]

Many of the Snow Leopard apps are 64 bit. The current version of Shades only works with 32 bit apps. We will have a version that is compatible with both 32 bit and 64 bit apps some time this week.

[twoisland]

I've downloaded version 1.2, which is supposed to work with 64 bit apps, but it still does not work with "Desktop and Screensaver" module of System Preferences. I've tried both color picker folders, and redownloaded it (today).

[rclair]

The new version (Shades 1.2) works with 64 bit apps. You can show this by testing it with TextEdit. (The Snow Leopard version of TextEdit is 64-bit.) We've also tested it with a number of other 64-bit apps.

The reason that it doesn't work with the System Preferences is most likely that System Preferences either locks out additional colorpickers deliberately or there is something in the way preference panes are loaded in its 64-bit incarnation that skips the step of checking ~/Library/ColorPickers.

I'll look into it, but it is unlikely that we can do anything about it. Shades is in the nature of a plugin and if the hosting app doesn't play nice, there isn't anything to do except complain to the developer of the hosting app.

[twoisland]

There's another third-party color picker (RCWebColorPicker.colorPicker) that DOES show up in System Preferences:Desktop & Screen Saver, if that helps any. It's installed in ~/Library/ColorPickers.

[rclair]

Upon investigation the problem turns out to be Garbage Collection: The 64-bit version of the System Preferences on Snow Leopard uses GC. This means that anything loaded in as a plugin (like additional color pickers) must supply a GC compatible version.

Shades doesn't support GC. It is unlikely that we will do a GC compatible version in the near future: making code that works both with and without GC is tricky and almost all existing applications are non-GC. (Apple specifically recommends *against* trying to convert existing applications to GC).

As a work-around, go to Applications and do "Get Info" on SystemPreferences.app. There is a box on the resulting panel that you can check to tell System Preferences to launch as a 32-bit app. You will then be able to use Shades.

[twoisland]

Thanks. It's interesting to learn about Garbage Collection. Who knew? Thanks for your explanation as to how it affects the plugin in System Preferences. If applications evolve toward 64 bit in the future, will Shades just not be visible? I notice the 64 bit TextEdit does display Shades properly.

[rclair]