Property color in CCLabelTTF is evil

[agro1986]

People change it expecting to change the font color, and instead it messes up outline color etc.

See for example: http://forum.cocos2d-swift.org/t/fail-to-add-stroke-for-cclabelttf/14188/2

I've also done the mistake.

So, just food for thought. The current property color should be changed to tintColor. Cause that's what it is. I know, it breaks existing code.

Another solution is to make the property color in CCLabelTTF change the font's color. It breaks consistency to the "color" supposed meaning, but everyone will be happy. Just add another property tintColor to CCLabelTTF to change the tint's color.

Or just leave it as it is and answer people's question on the forum again and again.

[slembcke]

Unfortunately because it's inherited from CCNode, we can't remove or deprecate it. We could change it's behavior in a non-backwards compatible way as you suggest, but that's not necessarily better either. I can guarantee that it will also create a lot of confusion and forum posts. It's hard to fix a bug or misfeature if people are already using it.

I'll leave this thread open for now, but I'm unconvinced that the pros outweigh the cons.

[agro1986]

Thanks for the reply.

Ah, right. Perhaps some people are already using the .color property to indeed change the tint of the font. In that case changing behavior is not a good thing for a point release.

Thanks a lot for reading my 2 cents.