cocoaforge

I have noticed that the message window input area applies nice ATSUI-enhanced formatting to the text, such as optimal letter spacing and automatic hyphen-to-quote conversion. However, these enhancements are not applied to the actual message text.

Is there a way to change this, or must Adium be changed?

It's that chatting doesn't support that stuff.

zaudragon wrote:It's that chatting doesn't support that stuff.

Actually my guess is that it's a limitation of webkit. If you look in Safari in the debug menu (google for how to turn that on) there are some ATSU related options.

However, it is also true that many serivces don't support many fancy text features.

zaudragon wrote:It's that chatting doesn't support that stuff.

It has nothing to do with chatting. Such text-transformation happens purely on the (Adium) client side.

So, if I type: That's terrific!

In the input area ATSUI converts the foot mark to an apostrophe and the fi to the fi ligature.

There’s no reason it couldn’t also display that way in the chat display area as well, even if what’s being sent is as originally typed.

There's an absolutely valid reason you ignored: WebKit, what draws the messages, doesn't support ATSUI perfectly yet, thus Apple leaves it off by default.

bgannin wrote:There's an absolutely valid reason you ignored: WebKit, what draws the messages, doesn't support ATSUI perfectly yet, thus Apple leaves it off by default.

Ah, okay. So the input area is a regular Cocoa widget, with ATSUI applied. However, the message display area is WebKit, with ATSUI disabled. Is that correct?

Is there a way to enable it for testing purposes?

Pazu wrote:

bgannin wrote:There's an absolutely valid reason you ignored: WebKit, what draws the messages, doesn't support ATSUI perfectly yet, thus Apple leaves it off by default.

Ah, okay. So the input area is a regular Cocoa widget, with ATSUI applied. However, the message display area is WebKit, with ATSUI disabled. Is that correct?

Is there a way to enable it for testing purposes?

Enable Safari's Debug menu and enable there... I don't know if it applies to all of WebKit or only Safari though.

bgannin wrote:Enable Safari's Debug menu and enable there... I don't know if it applies to all of WebKit or only Safari though.

When enabled, it did make a difference how a test paragraph was displayed…in and only in Safari. The kerning was greatly improved and the automatic fi ligature substituted, but the foot-mark remained unconverted to an apostrophe.

Also, this setting had no effect on Adium, so it may be that each WebKit caller gets its’ own ATSU setting.

I suspect there may be some settings on each text widget that specify what ATSU transformations may be applied. If Adium’s input field uses a default, unmodified Cocoa input field, then perhaps Apple has set those to use all available options by default.

Obviously, in Safari, they have set the content area to use certain transformations. I imagine these properties are set whether ATSU is enabled or not, though naturally they only come into effect once it’s enabled.

If that’s the case, maybe setting Adium’s display area to use all available transformations when available will work. (That is, unless we need to figure out how to turn on ATSU for Adium’s WebKit area.)

My guess, with no actual evidence to substantiate it, is this may be on by default for webkit in Tiger. It's probably off by default in Panther because it's not ready for prime time or is otherwise relatively untested. Just a guess though.

If you can find out how to turn it on outside Safari, let us know

evands wrote:this may be on by default for webkit in Tiger.

That doesn't seem to be the case

I've enabled atsu in safari to see what the big deal is...


umm..

what does this do again? I'm not seeing a difference.

The_Tick wrote:I've enabled atsu in safari to see what the big deal is...


umm..

what does this do again? I'm not seeing a difference.

Text rendering is a rather subtle thing. Using ATSU tweaks the spacing between letters some, and allows for some ligatures. Nothing the average user would ever notice, but it helps readability a bit.

Catfish_Man wrote:

The_Tick wrote:I've enabled atsu in safari to see what the big deal is...


umm..

what does this do again? I'm not seeing a difference.

Text rendering is a rather subtle thing. Using ATSU tweaks the spacing between letters some, and allows for some ligatures. Nothing the average user would ever notice, but it helps readability a bit.

So basically there's little point to it for most people?

http://www.macosxhints.com is really affected by ATSU

I can't read the