Function/Usability review request: how to configure inactive/disabled colors

[Matthew Woehlke]

As boemann pointed out (attentive people will have seen the previous 
thread [1], also see relevant code changes made [2]), Oxygen requires 
Active and Inactive color palettes to be different. Since KDE4 is 
already trying to induce 'color choice overload', rather than allowing 
users to configure three separate palettes, I think it makes more sense 
to generate the other palettes from the base (Active) palette by making 
simple, but configurable changes to it, such as lightening/darkening, 
allowing the foreground elements to fade into the background, etc.

To that end, I'm attaching a screenshot of the proposed GUI for 
configuring the secondary palette generation. There are two types of 
effects. "Global" effects are applied (first) to everything and are 
luma/chroma effects: darken (% closer to black), lighten (% closer to 
white), shade (adjust luma by absolute amount), and desaturate. 
Foreground/Decoration* effects are applied after global effects and are: 
fade (generic, linear blend) and tint (similar but tends to preserve 
luma; 'in' and 'out' switch if the foreground or background is most 
preserved).

(* "decorations" are hover and focus effects; this is the API name but a 
better description for the config would be welcomed.)

I'd like to get feedback on this. Does it look Usable/Accessible? Does 
it look like it will (be able to) produce satisfactory results?

Note: there is absolutely no API exposed by this, so I don't see why if 
we try it and hate it, (other than possibly annoying users) we can't 
throw the whole thing out and start over in KDE 4.1.

[1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/44733
[2] svn revisions 705482, 705931, and 705938

-- 
Matthew
"So long, and thanks for all the fish" -- the dolphins
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