Panther's Stripes

[tuviah snyder]

> In Panther, the backgrounds have changed from pinstripes to
> grey-with-barely-noticeable-pinstripts. Also the tab widget has changed
> and low looks like a set of buttons with a rounded rectangle box. What
> a confusing set of changes by apple.
>
> What I am wondering is: how does Rev do in this respect- does it
> automatically get the new widgets and backgrounds when running in
> appearance mgr look and feel?
It should. Unfortunately Apple broke/or didn't update it the appearence
manager API to draw Panther tabs correctly. The reason they say  is that the
appearence manager API simply didn't have enough information to draw these
tabs. Why they couldn't add a new call or specify a few new
adornments/decoration options is beyond me.

They then added an entirely new hitheme API which draws things like
pulsating buttons, and was supposed to draw panther tabs but in the words of
an Apple developer 'didn't have time'. Which frankly amazes me, but I'm not
the only one on the carbon-list requesting these API calls be fixed.

So API support for drawing these tabs may be added in a future Apple Panther
update, but we are working now on several workarounds (including using real
controls which is possible using the new theme design) to get you these new
tabs ASAP knowing full well that Apple may fix it or add whatever additional
data structures necessary to draw these by the time we release.

Tuviah Snyder
Runtime Revolution, Ltd.