What's up with the Cocoa Text System?
What's up with the Cocoa Text System?
- Subject: What's up with the Cocoa Text System?
- From: Charles Jenkins <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:50:07 -0500
For some reason, typing text on a Mac has always had a little bit of friction: however the OS receives keyboard input, it doesn't seem to be able to keep up as well as a PC. But lately, toward the end of Mavericks' lifespan and now on Yosemite, it has actually become painful to type in text. I'm excited about working on my app, but when it comes time to sit down and work on it, I always feel noticeable dread about having to type code into XCode.
(Does anyone use BBEdit? Is it more responsive?)
I don't want to open a Mac-vs-PC debate, so let me say I've used Macs since the advent of Jaguar and I'd never buy anything else for my primary, personal use. I work on PCs all day at work, but I bought a Mac mini there and work on PCs remotely through Jump Desktop because the Mac can handle my display better. Year over year, my experience is that everything is better on a Mac... except typing text. The PC just keeps up better.
I'm not just complaining here: I'm writing a word processor, so I'm concerned about how to make my app more responsive.
I'm composing this email using Airmail 2, but it wouldn't matter what email client I used. I recently switched from Sparrow, where I had exactly the same problems. I have turned off Autocorrect and Check Spelling While Typing to eliminate the significant pause that happens each time you finish a word and hit the space bar. I just wrote a reply and still had regular hiccups as I typed, so then I turned off Substitutions - Smart Links and Substitutions - Text Replacement. Now typing flows better and I'm able to get more words typed in before a pause. It's much better now, but there are still times when the computer will seem to hang for a bit and then a group of ten or so characters will all appear at once.
I am not a fast touch-typist, but post-Mavericks, it seems that in every new app I have go go and turn off a bunch of text system features we Mac users have come to rely on over the years in order to make typing at all bearable.
Is there anything I can do as a developer to make my app more responsive and make typing flow better, other than defaulting the app to turn off as many text features as possible or writing my own replacement for NSTextView?
--
Charles
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