[OS X TeX] Sierra and PDFKit

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Good news.

During the El Capitan era, we had to deal with several PDFKit bugs that affected TeXShop and other programs. Preliminary tests suggest that these bugs are fixed in Sierra. This is a reason to upgrade.

1) When typesetting, there was a noticeable flash before the new version of the document appeared. This is fixed. (Please let me know if you still see the flash. The display creeps upward slightly in MultiPage mode. This is my fault, not PDFKit's fault, and I'll eventually look into it.)



2) Sometimes after typesetting, a blank screen appeared in the Preview window. By scrolling down a few pages, the contents would again be visible. This was rarely seen with standard typesetting, but if the Preview window was split, it often happened in one half of the window. The bug was also prominent in external editor mode. This bug is fixed. (Please notify me if you still see it.)



3) The preview display was blurry for some users. This depended strongly on the hardware and monitor being used. Users with a Retina display usually didn't see the blur. It was only slightly noticeable here, but many users wrote me about it. In

	TeXShop Help Menu --> TeXShop Help Panel —> "What's New" (English version only)

scroll down to TeXShop Changes 3.55, for a list of several actions users could take to reduce the blur, including a few hidden preference changes. These actions helped some people, while others reported no difference.

I now have several reports that the blur is fixed in Sierra.

(If you still see a blur, please write me. But in that case, I need a lot of details to report back to Apple, including your hardware, your monitor, any unusual settings for the monitor of TeXShop, whether you tried any of the above tricks, etc. Nebulous bugs which affect some users and not others are very hard to deal with, but the above report shows that Apple listens!)


Dick Koch