How to achieve the recessed text style as in Apple's Messages for Mac?

Posted by Thruth on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Thruth
Published on 2012-04-14T17:12:01Z Indexed on 2012/04/14 17:29 UTC
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cocoa

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nstextfield

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nstextfieldcell

I'd like to replicate the recessed text style of Messages/iMessage, or, the text "white-shadow" style on a light gray background. Please refer to an image here for the style I desire.

As you can see, the texts are with "white-shadow" even on the light gray background. The bold texts do have subpixel rendering while the gray texts don't (by design?).

I've tried setBackgroundStyle:NSBackgroundStyleRaised . However it was generating shadows darker than the background. setBackgroundStyle:NSBackgroundStyleLowered was worse that it even overrode my font colour setting.

So, what is the right way to do this? Any tricks or just have to subclass NSTextFields ? Thanks.

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