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[blgentry]

I've been a customer of MC for Mac since version 20; 11 full versions and I just bought version 31.  In that time I've seen a lot of feedback from customers.  I've answered quite a number of questions, many of them Mac specific.

I see a few recurring requests for MC that are Mac specific.  I thought I'd outline 3 of them to see if maybe Bob wants to tackle one or more of them.

1.  Scrolling.  If you scroll, using the mouse wheel, in an album cover view or similar, you will notice that it is jerky and jumpy.  The Windows version of MC is buttery smooth.

2.  Full screen behavior and window sizing.  Grabbing the window resize handles (at the 4 corners of the main window) is very difficult.  It sometimes takes me 3 or 4 tries to get the handle.  Resizing behavior is inconsistent and can also reposition the window in the process.  Double click on the title bar generally maximizes the window.  I do this almost exclusively because resizing is so inconsistent.

Maximized works well for me.  However quite a few customers have asked for a full screen view that works like other Mac apps.  Native Mac Apps with Full Screen open a new space and put the window in this new space by themselves.  This is accessible using Mission Control and the various hot keys built-in to MacOS.  Adding this would make MC for Mac look and feel much more native.

3.  Diacritical, accented, and special character handling.  Work has recently been done on this.  I'm guessing that Bob has several man-days of effort into it.  However, I don't think it works like native Mac programs.  I only say this because one or two customers keep talking about it.  I'm often surprised by how many of MC's customers are not native English speakers and use MC primarily with a different language, many of which include diacritical characters.  I think this would be very welcome to that community.

For me #1 is the most visible thing that could be improved for Mac.

Thanks for reading.  To Bob especially:  I appreciate the effort you have put into MC for Mac.  On the off chance that we ever meet, I owe you a round of whatever beverage you like best.

Brian.

[bob]

I've been a customer of MC for Mac since version 20; 11 full versions and I just bought version 31.  In that time I've seen a lot of feedback from customers.  I've answered quite a number of questions, many of them Mac specific.

I see a few recurring requests for MC that are Mac specific.  I thought I'd outline 3 of them to see if maybe Bob wants to tackle one or more of them.

1.  Scrolling.  If you scroll, using the mouse wheel, in an album cover view or similar, you will notice that it is jerky and jumpy.  The Windows version of MC is buttery smooth.

Did a bit of playing with this. As far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with the drawing behavior, it's has to do with the scrolling wheel sensitivity.
With an Apple Magic Mouse or the trackpad on a Mac laptop I get the same behavior as on windows, perfectly smooth.
This is because the Mac mouse wheel API returns precision deltas for Apple devices.
But with a generic device, like my Logitech mouseman wheel, the API won't provide a precise delta and so we are multiplying by a fixed amount.
It just seems too sensitive.
I could reduce the fixed amount or add a configuration option for it.

2.  Full screen behavior and window sizing.  Grabbing the window resize handles (at the 4 corners of the main window) is very difficult.  It sometimes takes me 3 or 4 tries to get the handle.  Resizing behavior is inconsistent and can also reposition the window in the process.  Double click on the title bar generally maximizes the window.  I do this almost exclusively because resizing is so inconsistent.

Maximized works well for me.  However quite a few customers have asked for a full screen view that works like other Mac apps.  Native Mac Apps with Full Screen open a new space and put the window in this new space by themselves.  This is accessible using Mission Control and the various hot keys built-in to MacOS.  Adding this would make MC for Mac look and feel much more native.

With the skin I'm using, I compare grabbing and resizing to other apps, like say the terminal app. It seems pretty much the same, maybe a bit narrower (perhaps because we aren't taking retina into account?)

The fullscreen code in MC is very complicated. I'm a bit hesitant to mess with it. It would be easy to break.

3.  Diacritical, accented, and special character handling.  Work has recently been done on this.  I'm guessing that Bob has several man-days of effort into it.  However, I don't think it works like native Mac programs.  I only say this because one or two customers keep talking about it.  I'm often surprised by how many of MC's customers are not native English speakers and use MC primarily with a different language, many of which include diacritical characters.  I think this would be very welcome to that community.

Everything is pre-composed UTF-8 now. There shouldn't be any issues with display any more unless files are tagged improperly.
Entering diacriticals is still only done with the "hold key" method because of the way MC gets characters from the Mac API (one at a time). This MAY be possible to change going forward.

For me #1 is the most visible thing that could be improved for Mac.

Thanks for reading.  To Bob especially:  I appreciate the effort you have put into MC for Mac.  On the off chance that we ever meet, I owe you a round of whatever beverage you like best.

Brian.

Sounds good If we are every in the same place at the same time

[bob]

A little more testing. Even if the scroll multiplier is changed, it's never going to be as smooth as with an Apple device. The API simply doesn't provide the same amount of events with a generic device.

I can see this even in included apps like Safari.

[blgentry]

A little more testing. Even if the scroll multiplier is changed, it's never going to be as smooth as with an Apple device. The API simply doesn't provide the same amount of events with a generic device.

I can see this even in included apps like Safari.

I have to grudgingly agree.  Scroll using the trackpad on my MacBook is pretty smooth on MC.  It's not perfect as the display seems to judder a bit at low speeds.  But it's pretty good.  I tried turning down scroll speed to the minimum in preferences (for my mouse) and in LogiOptions (Logitech enhancement software for their mice).  This didn't really do anything.

I also tried scrolling in Safari and I see what you see:  Judder and jerk with Logitech mouse.  Pretty darned smooth with track pad.  Darn.

Thanks for looking,
Brian.

[blgentry]

With the skin I'm using, I compare grabbing and resizing to other apps, like say the terminal app. It seems pretty much the same, maybe a bit narrower (perhaps because we aren't taking retina into account?)

I disagree on this one.  Other apps have a title bar, so grabbing to move is very easy.  With MC there is a very narrow area to grab the window to move it.  I know I talked about resizing (and I will again below).  It's all of the window handling that's odd.

Resizing is hard in MC.  There are very narrow areas to grab.  Try doing a radical resize. Go fast and move a lot.  Try it a few times.  You should end up finding that MC snaps to one edge of the screen at some point, even if you started no where near the edge.  When you you move the window, try moving it rapidly.  At some point you should find that one of two things happens:
A) The app suddenly maximizes
B) Spotlight activates 1 or more times.

I'm certain that skins have some influence on this.  But I think there are some behaviors that are independent of the skins.  Like the window moving and resizing oddities that I just outlined.

Thanks,
Brian.

[bob]

I disagree on this one.  Other apps have a title bar, so grabbing to move is very easy.  With MC there is a very narrow area to grab the window to move it.  I know I talked about resizing (and I will again below).  It's all of the window handling that's odd.

Resizing is hard in MC.  There are very narrow areas to grab.  Try doing a radical resize. Go fast and move a lot.  Try it a few times.  You should end up finding that MC snaps to one edge of the screen at some point, even if you started no where near the edge.  When you you move the window, try moving it rapidly.  At some point you should find that one of two things happens:
A) The app suddenly maximizes
B) Spotlight activates 1 or more times.

I'm certain that skins have some influence on this.  But I think there are some behaviors that are independent of the skins.  Like the window moving and resizing oddities that I just outlined.

Thanks,
Brian.

On my M1 mini I can move it and resize it as fast as I can without any weirdness.
And I can move it from the title bar without issue as long as I avoid the area on the top left where the customize buttons would be if they existed.
IIRC I disabled that snapping crap on linux and Mac.

What skin are you using and what view?

[blgentry]

I'm mostly using HBPME's Dream In Blue.  I have also extensively used Marko's Black and Blue Too SB (HC).  But for testing I just switched to Modern Cards Dark.

The skin has an effect on how big the title bar grab area is.  It's not bad on Modern Cards Dark, but I missed several times while testing and grabbed a part that does not do anything.  So my mouse just moved and the window stayed put.  I guess what I'm saying here is that the MC window should be wrapped with a title bar as if it were a native app (which it is really).  This would make it more consistent.

For resizing, I spent enough time to figure out what I'm seeing.  Try resizing *smaller* from any corner other than the upper right.  As you make the window smaller, you'll reach a minimum size.  At that size the resize action changes and becomes a window move.  It kind of "drags" the window in the direction you are resizing.

When done rapidly this seems to be a snap to edge effect, but it's not.  Still, it's very odd.  You don't expect this based on how all the other windows in this system work.

Are these all symptoms that JRiver is not using a framework from Apple and are using more low level calls instead?  I think I remember reading that.   I also kind of remember that MC for Windows is similar.  It does not use MS Foundation classes, but rather has its own toolkit, using the lower level primitives.

Thanks,
Brian.

[bob]

If you try the same operations on the Options windows for example, you'll see behavior more like what you'd expect.
The mainframe window is different. It's totally controlled by MC, I believe mostly because it has to be for the skinning to work but that's probably a question for Matt.

[blgentry]

I guess thread is finished. 

Take care,
Brian.

[LilyAarseth]

1.  Scrolling.  If you scroll, using the mouse wheel, in an album cover view or similar, you will notice that it is jerky and jumpy.  The Windows version of MC is buttery smooth.

I am using a third party app to have smooth scrolling and even when having MC cropped to a portrait to minimize its rendering load (2100-ish tall 1200px wide), it still barely keeps a steady 30 draws/second, and stutters a lot when scrolling up and down on a 4k display on my m1 mac mini no scaling or anything, if i resize the mc window to a small square it scrolls just fine at 60 and even 120 if i set my tv to 1440p120, but it just seems like the rendering is unoptimized or is not using multithread/gpu accelerated or something, i only see 1 core/thread being used when i scroll. If MC covers the entire screen, scrolling becomes so bad it becomes essentially stop motion, been like this since i started using mc on mac in late 2020.

[JimH]

What happens without the third party app?

[blgentry]

I've just tried some experiments:

1.  Normal OS scroll settings.
2.  LogitOptions+ Smooth Scrolling enabled
3.  MOS Smooth Scrolling enabled.

LogiOptions+ is Logitech's software for working with their mice on Macs.  I just found the Smooth Scrolling button today.
MOS is a free application that makes scrolling smoother with 3rd party mice on Mac.  https://mos.caldis.me

All experiments done on an M1 Mac mini.

With 1, everything (Safari, MC, etc) is jumpy and judder.
With 2, Safari and other apps are really quite smooth.  MC is smoother, but still jumpy.
With 3, Safari and friends become even smoother and really fluid.  MC is about the same as 2.

If I make the MC window about half the size of my screen, it becomes much smoother.  Running MC maximized, it's pretty jumpy.

Overall I'm really happy to have discovered the LogiOptions+ setting and this other utility.  Maybe there's something that can be adjusted a bit in MC to make it scroll as smoothly as Safari.

Thanks,
Brian.

[FrostyCanada]

Hello Bob, would there be any possibility of making the upgrade process easier with MC for the Mac?

Something like an “in app” upgrade process instead of paying, getting a license, downloading new version, Installing the new version, find the library, copy library file over to new version, etc?

Brian

[JimH]

Hello Bob, would there be any possibility of making the upgrade process easier with MC for the Mac?

Something like an “in app” upgrade process instead of paying, getting a license, downloading new version, Installing the new version, find the library, copy library file over to new version, etc?

Brian

You can restore from a backup.  MC makes them automatically.  If you have trouble finding them, search for *.zip files.

I agree it could be better.

[blgentry]

The fullscreen code in MC is very complicated. I'm a bit hesitant to mess with it. It would be easy to break.

I was thinking about this and wanted to clarify my thoughts.

Today, when you use Display View in MC for MC (Command-3) it does exactly what I'm asking for.  It puts MC into its own Space and switches to it.

All I'm asking for is that when you maximize MC in Normal Mode, that it do the same thing:  Switch to it's own a space *and* be maximized.   Since MC does not have a traditional title bar (OS provided) there is no need to remove that.  Unmaximizing would then bring MC back to the original Space at the original size.

Thanks for reading.
Brian.

[bob]

I am using a third party app to have smooth scrolling and even when having MC cropped to a portrait to minimize its rendering load (2100-ish tall 1200px wide), it still barely keeps a steady 30 draws/second, and stutters a lot when scrolling up and down on a 4k display on my m1 mac mini no scaling or anything, if i resize the mc window to a small square it scrolls just fine at 60 and even 120 if i set my tv to 1440p120, but it just seems like the rendering is unoptimized or is not using multithread/gpu accelerated or something, i only see 1 core/thread being used when i scroll. If MC covers the entire screen, scrolling becomes so bad it becomes essentially stop motion, been like this since i started using mc on mac in late 2020.

That's not currently multi-threaded drawing because the Mac API can't do UI operations from a background thread.
There MAY be a way to work around that. We are looking into it.

[FrostyCanada]

A good example of an “in app” upgrade that is elegant and easy to use is Bombich Software “Carbon Copy Cloner” which I have been supporting for years now.
 
 I would give also anything to have this feature built into future versions of MC.
 
 Brian

[bob]

I was thinking about this and wanted to clarify my thoughts.

Today, when you use Display View in MC for MC (Command-3) it does exactly what I'm asking for.  It puts MC into its own Space and switches to it.

All I'm asking for is that when you maximize MC in Normal Mode, that it do the same thing:  Switch to it's own a space *and* be maximized.   Since MC does not have a traditional title bar (OS provided) there is no need to remove that.  Unmaximizing would then bring MC back to the original Space at the original size.

Thanks for reading.
Brian.

MC isn't doing anything special to put itself into a space. It still works on MacOS versions previous to the addition of spaces.
I don't see how making the standard view full screen use up the entire area without the Apple menu bar would work, you wouldn't have a menu.

[blgentry]

Your reply confuses me.  Spaces goes all the way back to 2006 with MacOS 10.5 Leopard.

MC runs Display View using this feature.  Are you saying this is accidental or something?  Display View uses a Space for MC.

As for menu support, the way this works with other Mac programs is, when in full screen, the menus disappear.  Moving the mouse to the top edge of the screen causes the menu bar to appear.  Moving away causes the menus to disappear again.

Brian.

[bob]

Your reply confuses me.  Spaces goes all the way back to 2006 with MacOS 10.5 Leopard.

MC runs Display View using this feature.  Are you saying this is accidental or something?  Display View uses a Space for MC.

As for menu support, the way this works with other Mac programs is, when in full screen, the menus disappear.  Moving the mouse to the top edge of the screen causes the menu bar to appear.  Moving away causes the menus to disappear again.

Brian.

Ok that's fine. I didn't see references prior to 10.15.
Anyway no we don't do anything special.
Display View is just another window but without a menu  bar.

[LilyAarseth]

That's not currently multi-threaded drawing because the Mac API can't do UI operations from a background thread.
There MAY be a way to work around that. We are looking into it.

That makes a lot of sense, because the hardware itself should be more than capable of drawing 60+ with no issue even with MC covering the entire useable screen space. I haven't upgraded from 29 yet but a snappier UI would sell me on the spot!

[EnglishTiger]

Scrolling Smoothness/Speed will always be affected by what you are scrolling and where on the screen the mouse is placed.

For example in those views where the CoverArt is displayed, like Albums View, hovering on an individual Image will bring up a men, so if you are scrolling through that page with the mouse placed anywhere other than in the scrollbar area there will always be times where scrolling will result in 2 redraws, the 11st to redraw all the images and then the 2nd to display the menu associated with the Image the Mouse is Hovering Over.

Scrolling while the Mouse is hovering somewhere in the ScrollBar area will alwyas be smoother/faster then scrolling with the mouse than hovering anywhere else on a page/view displaying only coverart.

Having said that by making 2 simple changes to the Mac Mouse Settings  I've managed to get Scrolling on the Mac to be Identical, in both speed and smoothness.

All I did was switch off "Natural Scrolling", which reverses the scroll wheel action from Mac Style to Windows Style and Increase the Scroll Speed.

Incidentally, my mouse and keyboard combination are used on both my Win and Mac PC's using Bluetooth and I'm now loving the fact that I no longer have to remember that the scroll wheel works the other way round on the mac.

I also compared resizing the MC Standard View Window with resizing the Mac Application Monitor Window and was not surprised to find that resizing the MC Standard View Window was easier, quicker and smoother than resizing the Application Monitor Window; even though the target area for the resize handle for both windows was, as far as I could visually discern, identical.

[margolbe]

My mac is unresponsive when trying to select a large number of files so I can update files from tags.  When I try to select a large number of files, the machine seems to freeze (spinning ball) and eventually I have to terminate the JRiver app.  Don't have this problem with Windows.  My mac has plenty of RAM - 32 GB Mac Studio.  When can I do to fix this?

[HaWi]

Regarding scrolling on my iMac and MacBookPro (specs in signature) it is always jumpy when I scroll through Pane Views. Might be because both machines are old.