Enhancing the colour schemes [was: Re: sane defaults (security icons)]

[Olaf Schmidt]

[Anders Lund, Montag, 17. Januar 2005 14:00]
> Sometimes the system colors just doesn't do. I recently added a feature
> to kate which shades the background of used documents in the Document
> List, so that it is easy to spot the most recent modified/viewed
> documents. I can't use system colors, because there is no colors that
> can safely fill the needs.

I assume simply using the alternative list background colour doesn't work?

We discussed a similar problem in this thread:
http://lists.kde.org/?t=110236765700005&r=1&w=2

Maybe the solution found in that case would work for Kate as well.

> So I chose to set defaults that work with 
> the default color scheme used by KDE, and make the colors configurable
> (as well as the feature can be turned off completely).

Good.

> Likewise, the colors used for syntax highlight in kate can't use system
> colors, since there are simply not colors enough.

This is why I suggested to enhance the colour schemes for KDE 4.
I know that there are good reasons for doing it this way in KDE 3.4.
I hope that we can find a better solution for KDE 4.0, though.

Having to change the colours in most key KDE applications separately 
doesn't really fit to the idea of having central colour schemes in 
kcontrol. Of course we could add support for individual applications to 
the metathemes, or at least to kpersonalizer, but the problem is that 
such a solution would soon be out of date whenever there are changes in 
applications.

I think enhancing the colour schemes to include enough colours for these 
situations would be a cleaner approach. How many additional colours do 
you need for syntax highlighting?

> So we provide a default color scheme that works, and all the colors are
> configurable. We have support for color schemes, and disabling of using
> colors for syntax highlighting will be added, as well as a mechanism to
> import color schemes so that theme developers can provide kate color
> schemes as well.

My suggestion of having one central colour scheme for all colours needed 
in applications doesn't work, then this is indeed a good approach.

> There are no hardcoded colors in Kate to my knowledge. If there is,
> file a bug report and I'll fix it.

As far as I know all colours in Kate are configurable, so there are no 
absolute accessibility problems with it. But one problem I found is that 
once you define colours in Kate, it is impossible to bring it back into 
"use system colours" mode without deleting the config file. Maybe this 
has already been fixed in the meantime.

Do you think my suggestion of enhancing the colour schemes to include 
enough colours for Kate and Kontact would work?


Olaf

-- 
KDE Accessibility Project
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