Issue 118538 - hard-coded background color in Options dialog is problematic on light-on-dark desktop themes
Summary: hard-coded background color in Options dialog is problematic on light-on-dark...
Status: ACCEPTED
Alias: None
Product: General
Classification: Code
Component: code (show other issues)
Version: current
Hardware: All All
: P5 (lowest) Normal (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-10-21 20:42 UTC by Ariel Constenla-Haile
Modified: 2022-04-03 20:35 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: PATCH
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


Attachments
KDE "Evening Lilac" light-on-dark theme (81.81 KB, image/png)
2011-10-21 20:43 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details
KDE "Wonton Soup" light-on-dark theme (73.72 KB, image/png)
2011-10-21 20:44 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details
Attempt to replace the hard-coded background color (1.10 KB, patch)
2011-10-21 20:58 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details | Diff
Draw doc. with screen-shots before and after applying the patch (574.01 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics)
2011-10-21 21:02 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details
Patch - second try (label text color retrieved from style settings) (1.06 KB, patch)
2011-10-22 00:43 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details | Diff
Screenshots for 2nd version (800.53 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics)
2011-10-22 00:44 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details
Screenshots (847.12 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics)
2011-10-25 23:43 UTC, Ariel Constenla-Haile
no flags Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this issue.
Description Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 20:42:39 UTC
Reported by Eustace on users@openoffice.org http://openoffice.org/projects/www/lists/users/archive/2011-09/message/154

"Since I use white on blue color scheme in my system, the title lines in the same dialog (eg. General, Text Document, HTML Document) have a gray background (132, 132, 132) which makes the white text difficult to read."

Looking at the code in cui/source/options/optcolor.cxx
the background color of the categories is hard-coded to COL_LIGHTGRAY, that is RGB( 0xC0, 0xC0, 0xC0) in hex, or (192, 192, 192) in decimal, see tools/inc/tools/color.hxx
Comment 1 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 20:43:58 UTC
Created attachment 76911 [details]
KDE "Evening Lilac" light-on-dark theme
Comment 2 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 20:44:59 UTC
Created attachment 76912 [details]
KDE "Wonton Soup" light-on-dark theme
Comment 3 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 20:58:56 UTC
Created attachment 76913 [details]
Attempt to replace the hard-coded background color

A possible solution could be:
Instead of checking for high-contrast mode, and hard-coding the background color, we can use the two contrasting colors: the dialog color and the text color, and lighten or darken the background according to their luminescence relationship.
Comment 4 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 21:02:28 UTC
Created attachment 76914 [details]
Draw doc. with screen-shots before and after applying the patch
Comment 5 Marcus 2011-10-21 22:28:22 UTC
Thanks for reporting this issue and the patch. However, I think the color now with your patch is a bit too dark and should be lighter. The selected text is now indeed readable but the selection bar is not really identifiable.

Maybe the problem is not the light color for the selection bar, it could be also the text color which is too light?
Comment 6 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-21 22:50:44 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> Thanks for reporting this issue and the patch. However, I think the colour now
> with your patch is a bit too dark and should be lighter. The selected text is
> now indeed readable but the selection bar is not really identifiable.
> 
> Maybe the problem is not the light colour for the selection bar, it could be
> also the text colour which is too light?

can you explain what you mean by "selected text" and by "selection bar". I don't get if we are talking about the same thing here.

Just to use the same terms, this issue is about the background colour in the categories on the Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - Appearance option page, that are labelled "General", "Text Document", "HTML Document", "Spreadsheet", etc. 
So here there is no selection at all (that's what I don't get in your explanation).

Back to the issue, the text colour (for "General", "Text Document", "HTML Document", "Spreadsheet", etc.) is the default bold text colour.
That's why I've chosen the dialogue colour for the background: this two colours are likely to never be the same (otherwise the text written in a dialogue could not be read).
Then I simply lighten or darken the background colour, so that it differs a little from the dialogue colour.
Comment 7 Marcus 2011-10-21 23:32:02 UTC
> can you explain what you mean by "selected text" and by "selection bar". I
> don't get if we are talking about the same thing here.
> 
> Just to use the same terms, this issue is about the background colour in the
> categories on the Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - Appearance option page,
> that are labelled "General", "Text Document", "HTML Document", "Spreadsheet",
> etc. 
> So here there is no selection at all (that's what I don't get in your
> explanation).

OK, forget selection bar. I got it wrong.

In the Draw doc with the pictures on the "current" side it's indeed not readable. However, in the pictures with "patched" it could be a bit more lighter. To indentify it better as separation between the "General", "Text Document", "HTML Document", "Spreadsheet", etc. sections. Especially on slide 4 in the "patched" picture it's really too dark.
Comment 8 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-22 00:43:23 UTC
Created attachment 76916 [details]
Patch - second try (label text color retrieved from style settings)
Comment 9 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-22 00:44:28 UTC
Created attachment 76917 [details]
Screenshots for 2nd version
Comment 10 Marcus 2011-10-22 09:45:14 UTC
Thanks for the new patch and screenshot. I can see the change in the patch (from 32 to 16), however, it's not visible in the pictures on slide 5. Can you see a difference?
Comment 11 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2011-10-25 23:43:50 UTC
Created attachment 76932 [details]
Screenshots
Comment 12 Oliver-Rainer Wittmann 2012-06-13 12:27:30 UTC
getting rid of value "enhancement" for field "severity".
For enhancement the field "issue type" shall be used.
Comment 13 Rob Weir 2013-03-11 15:04:52 UTC
I'm adding this comment to all open issues with Issue Type == PATCH.  We have 220 such issues, many of them quite old.  I apologize for that.  

We need your help in prioritizing which patches should be integrated into our next release, Apache OpenOffice 4.0.

If you have submitted a patch and think it is applicable for AOO 4.0, please respond with a comment to let us know.

On the other hand, if the patch is no longer relevant, please let us know that as well.

If you have any general questions or want to discuss this further, please send a note to our dev mailing list:  dev@openoffice.apache.org

Thanks!

-Rob
Comment 14 Marcus 2017-05-20 11:27:43 UTC
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".