[Konsole-devel] [Bug 162444] Support temporarily switching the color scheme

[fexpop at onlinehome.de]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162444         




------- Additional Comments From fexpop onlinehome de  2008-05-22 12:13 -------
Robert Knight wrote:

> 
> Creating and deleting profiles every time you want to change the background color is unnecessary. 


Sure, at least deleting isn't necessary at all. I had just included it 
to show how much effort a *temporary* change of a colour scheme takes. 
If you decide to keep the scheme and give it a name it's simple again. 
But it's not the same, see below.

> I would create three or four profiles with different color settings and just switch between them.  My profile list looks something like:
> 
> - Shell
> - KDE 4
> - KDE 4 Alt Colors
> - KDE 4 Release
> - Shell Pastel Colors


Sure, I knew this advice was coming. But it doesn't give the comfort of 
Konsole 1.x. Here ar e some reasons:

1. I have to know *before* if there's a colour scheme I would eventually 
like to use. Everytime I decide on-thy-fly to change colours I'm out 
there again with my 10 (+8) clicks.
2. Morover on my Laptop I would need all the profiles in outdoor/indoor 
variants.
3. If I need to change e.g. the font, I would have to change the setting 
in every single profile, unless I only change the parent (while 
inheritance from a parent is a very bad idea, see below!)
4. Creating a whole profile just for a different colour scheme is bloated.
5. I have to create the profiles on every machine I'm using. They are 
not there if I just sit down to help on a colleagues machine.


> One feature which is not made obvious in the UI is that profiles inherit settings from their parent profile, 
 > the parent being the profile which was selected when you click 'New 

Profile'.  In the example list above,
 > if I change the font size in the "Shell" profile it will propagate to 

the other profiles unless I specifically
 > set a different font size in one of them.


This is a very bad idea!!! How are you supposed to know which profiles 
are affected, if you're changing a profile? Neither the parent nor the 
children of a profile are listed anywhere!

The results of changing a single profile are completely unpredictable 
unless you remember the complete history of profile relationships (do you?)!

And then there are some questions of consistency:

Do changes cascade down to grandchildren as well? (Answer: Sometimes!)
How is a parent-children relationship tracked? By name? (If I delete the 
profile "Shell" and create a new one called "Shell" is it still 
considered the parent of "Child of Shell" even if it's not?)

I played around a bit. After a couple of changes in different profiles 
with even a clear relationship, i.e. parent-child-grandchild, I was in 
complete confusion!


> Having said that, I am not opposed to the idea of adding a menu to change the color scheme for a single tab 
 > rather than a profile.  There are temporary settings for changing the 

scrollback and font size amongst other things.

> The problem there is the confusion over whether a setting applies to all tabs permanently or only to the current one.


I don't see any problem here. It's not a problem for font sizes either. 
  You could explicitly call it "temporary colour schema", or you could 
place the colour schema selection in the "View" menu as well, which kind 
of indicates that it's not a permanent setting.

Kind regards,

Felix