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Nathan Manceaux-Panot

@cykele.ro

70 followers 34 following 64 posts

Loves building tools, making art. Doesn't know how to compromise. Values kindness greatly. Building @retcon.app, the macOS app for effortlessly rewriting Git history. Blog: https://pending.design Links: https://cykele.ro

pending.design

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Reposted by Nathan Manceaux-Panot

depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 1d

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Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 15h

This post is short but took a surprisingly long time to write (and rewrite, and rewrite). I hope to get faster with practice!

It also took some time to implement good code highlighting, light/dark image switching, nicer footnotes, and more.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 15h

New blog post! Retcon 1.4 got a lot faster. Much of that speed is owed to caches. Straightforward caches, oddly-specific caches, hard-to-invalidate caches, the works. Here's some details about them!

pending.design/making-retcon-...

Making Retcon fast: A cache for every need

Big speedups through bespoke caches.

pending.design

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Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 1d

Added a small callout animation to pending.design/ for when you click a footnote backlink!

(doesn't seem to be working on iOS, though. weird)

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 2d

In the Retcon source, the commit list is called the "timeline", because yeah, that's the metaphor my brain kept going to

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 2d

I love that there's an (abandoned) Twitter client called Retcon: github.com/JGRennison/retcon

@retcon's codename was Bluebird, because I kept calling commits "tweets" by mistake. I envisioned a "bird mode" setting, that would play Apple's cheerful tweet sound whenever you committed. Tweet tweet!

GitHub - JGRennison/retcon: A cross-platform Twitter client using wxWidgets.

A cross-platform Twitter client using wxWidgets. Contribute to JGRennison/retcon development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 11d

Yeah, that’d be much nicer! For instance I had to disable this tweak on iPhone, because the bottom bar also gets tinted, and looks terrible

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 11d

Safari actually just reads the page’s background color. So to fool it, my background CSS property has a blue color as the lowermost color, and a gray color on top. (well, a gradient with one single gray stop)
Safari reads the blue, the user sees the gray!

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 11d

Just tweaked my blog so that Safari's toolbar blends into the page. Look at that expansive sky 😌
pending.design

(only on Mac and iPad, because that made the bottom bar look strange on iPhone)

Screenshot of https://pending.design in Safari, on macOS 26. The toolbar is white, visually separating it from the sky that's just below, at the top of the page.

Screenshot of https://pending.design in Safari, on macOS 26. The toolbar is blue, visually blending it into the sky that's just below, at the top of the page.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 13d

If I could only follow a single account in Bluesky, it’d be @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social. She consistently posts fascinating, insane bits of knowledge and slices of Wikipedia life. Endlessly delightful.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 17d

In Preview in iPadOS 26, you can drag the loupe around, complete with zoom and color aberration effects. Feels like a tiny dose of the old Apple whimsy.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 17d

The iOS keyboard now tells you the name of each emoji you insert, so you know how to search for it later. Cool! 😃⌚️📼🌀🛜🈁

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 20d

How am I expected to build Liquid Glass icons when Icon Composer won't even run on my Mac?!

A screenshot of the macOS Finder. It’s showing the contents of a folder named “Graphics_Tools_for_Xcode_7.2”. In it, there’s a few apps, notably one named “Icon Composer”. That app has a large “can’t run” sign on it, however, and sports a pre-Big Sur icon.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 25d

(also battery life is really good, fit is better than with the AirPods Pro 1—they stay in my ears when chewing, now—sound quality is slightly better, and volume control is useful. Wonderful all around.)

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 25d

Having an excellent time with the AirPods Pro 3. Adaptive Mode is fantastic—it's like Transparency, but it discreetly turns down passthrough volume whenever things are too loud. So it puts a cap on the outside world's loudness, never sounding unnatural. I might just start wearing these all the time!

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · 29d

So, how's everyone's Tahoe Dock looking? Not a lot of squircle jails over here, surprisingly.

Screenshot of a macOS Dock. A bunch of apps; the only three in squircle jail are CodeRunner, Retcon, and Pixelmator Pro.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 15

Hard to believe how voluminous hard drives used to be; all that for just a few gigs!

A large, gray storage container, in the corner of a park. There are various yellow inscriptions on it. Amongst other numbers, the most prominent label reads “12GB”.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 12

The dev icon wouldn’t work well as the primary icon though, as it lacks its own personality, its own brand—it looks like just a tool in Apple’s own toolkit.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 12

Here’s a secret variant to Retcon’s icon! It’s used when running a dev build directly from Xcode, for easy differentiation.

I tried to emulate Apple’s dev app icons, for an in-development feel. The pen actually has better contrast than in the release version, and really shows off its plastic shine!

Two icons of Mac app Retcon.

On the left, the icon used by the official releases: a purple eraseable pen in front of a square whiteboard with purple corners, on which a symbol is drawn. The symbol represents two Git branches, the second one being dashed.
The icon is stylized but rendered realistically: the pen has reflections, the metal grain and shine.

On the right, a icon that’s superficially similar. It has almost exactly the same dimensions and layout, but it represents a blueprint. On the blueprint, white lines draw the shape of a whiteboard, and the same branch symbol. There is also some text written vertically on the left, reading “DESIGNED AND BUILT BY CYKELERO”. Above the blueprint, there is the same realistic pen as in the left icon, but without its purple label.

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Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 12

Something that's strange to me is "Send me marketing email" checkboxes on signup forms. I never check them, and so often get subscribed to the marketing lists anyway.

I understand it's strongly in their interest; and probably legally allowed; but then why have the checkbox at all?!

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 11

You know what clipboard managers do—but they're useful for a lot more than just what's obvious.

The other uses of a clipboard manager

Go beyond the obvious, and make your life nicer.

pending.design

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 10

Look at that hammer!

A comparison between the Beta 7 and RC versions of the Xcode 26 icon. The former features a glassier, less defined hammer, whereas the latter has slightly more differentiated materials between the handle and hammer head. Also, the old icon had a more complex grid behind the hammer, with a couple of circles that are now gone.

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 9

Apple in 2009: "text selection in Preview is now AI-powered"

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 8

Small new @retcon.app feature: as of 1.4.2, released yesterday, you can now toggle multiple selected files in one click. Neat!

Nathan Manceaux-Panot @cykele.ro · Sep 4

That's certainly how it ended up, but I never realized Snow Leopard's motivation was explicitly to remedy degrading software quality!
(from a Bertrand Serlet interview: youtu.be/qpIuIImN0YI?t=7391 )

Well, we're pretty overdue for that sort of thinking to come back (please)