Fwd: Temporary KColorScheme change - hard-code some state colors

[Jos Poortvliet]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Luciano Montanaro <mikelima at gmail.com>
Date: Sep 14, 2007 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: Temporary KColorScheme change - hard-code some state colors
To: kde-core-devel at kde.org, Jos Poortvliet <jospoortvliet at gmail.com>


Ugh! The new antispam filter is blocking my messages. Wasn't the required
subscription enough?

Jos, please, forward this to the list if it does not get through even this
time.

Thanks,
Luciano

Il Friday 14 September 2007 14:41:46 Jos Poortvliet ha scritto:
> On 9/14/07, Andreas Pakulat <apaku at gmx.de> wrote:
> > On 14.09.07 11:11:55, Richard Dale wrote:
> > > On Friday 07 September 2007, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> > > > Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> > > > > Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> > > > >> I'm thinking I'd like to check in the following diff as a
> > > > >> temporary measure to get people thinking about active vs. inactive
> > > > >> widget states.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> This is a TEMPORARY change (things will be configurable in
> > > > >> 4.0-final as I've previously talked about; (1) for example), but
> > > > >> will hopefully help shake people out of the KDE3 way of thinking
> > > > >> where it was "ok" to not think about widget states w.r.t. the
> > > > >> color scheme.
> > > > >
> > > > > Since I'm hearing complaints about the current situation
> > > > > (basically, when using oxygen, can't tell active/inactive apart),
> > > > > I'm going to commit this by Friday unless someone objects.
> > > >
> > > > Done, since no one objected.
> > >
> > > I think this change is wrong because it turns your computer into a 'one
> > > window at a time' system. There must be better ways of showing which is
> > > the active window than changing the entire color scheme by darkening
> > > the window contents. I find it fatiguing when the window contents keep
> > > changing when you click on different windows - as opposed to just the
> > > window title bar changing (ie more transparent, or a different color),
> > > which is the normal way to indicate which window is the active one. If
> > > I want to read two documents at once, I don't want one doc dimmed and
> > > the other normal.
> >
> > I completely agree. Also this slows down the switching between apps
> > considerably, at least on my machine. And we need the title-bar-info
> > about active window anyway, because
> >
> > a) darkening doesn't work for all widgets (kate-view for example)
> > b) Its IMHO harder to see which window will gain focus while switching
> > through windows with alt+tab. Especially on multi-screen setups where
> > the list of windows is on one screen, but the window you want to switch
> > to might be on another screen.
> >
> > The oxygen kwin style needs to be changed to indicate the active window
> > via the titlebar (how exactly that happens, I don't care as long as it
> > has good contrast to inactive windows).
>
> Besides, repainting each window when it loses focus is bad for
> performance and creates flickering, esp on lower end hardware.

Not to mention in a remote session. Bu I guess I'm one of the few peoples to
use that feature of X. KDE4 applications feel quite slower than KDE3
applications here, in a remote session.


> But
> hasn't this been discussed before, and wasn't there agreement on "we
> all hate it"? Or was that only on the KOffice mailinglist?
>
> And finally, KWin can do this, the style doesn't have to. Blurring,
> desaturating or darkening inactive windows seems a (compositing)
> windowmanager job to me.

And that would work for non-KDE applications, if the user chooses to use the
feature. I don't know about you, but I tend to use a few non-kde applications
along with my KDE desktop. They should not look completely at odd with the
window borders, if possible...

Luciano