[RFC] Color usability time...

[Robert Knight]

I forgot about the OU document on color roles entirely, I should have remembered, I was in one of the BOF sessions when some of the material was discussed at the last Akademy.  Thanks for the reminder Aaron.  I will post my suggestions for color roles there.

Regards
Robert.

On 04/06/07, Matthew Woehlke <mw_triad at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Robert Knight wrote:
> > Just a word about prioritisation.  Your post discusses quite a variety
> > of topics.  I think the addition of new colour roles is far and away
> > the most important item in the list - so perhaps we should concentrate
> > on that for now.
> 
> Agreed. My main motivation for doing the other stuff is that a: it is
> also needed, and b: it's practically done already :-). The only thing
> really to do is decide what the API's look like. Other than that I agree
> on the priorities; I just posted 'the great laundry list of everything'.
> 
> > For example, colors to indicate:
> > [snip list]
> 
> Suggestions relative to the list should probably be done in reference to
> Olaf's original document :-).
> 
> Btw, Aaron, you are 100% right that numbers should never appear in usage
> of these API's. I'm not sure how obvious that was in the original
> message, but let me be perfectly clear that I fully agree with you :-).
> 
> Anyway, since this /is/ just a list, we can (to a limited extent) keep
> tweaking it for a while longer. Right now, defining the API is most
> important...
> 
> > I am going to be possibly controversial here and suggest that we don't
> > rush to provide a configuration tool with KDE to change all of these
> > colours individually,   Instead with the focus on trying to provide a
> > selection of attractive and tested colour schemes, including several
> > to cater for common problems which people may have with colours.
> 
> ...which means I agree with this. In fact, this is exactly what I mean
> by pushing the API first, there is a real chance the configuration
> widgets (i.e. the kcmshell module) will come later.
> 
> > One other thing is that there are times when it might an application
> > might require a use which is not covered in the list.  Perhaps we
> > could provide a method for an application to ask whether a particular
> > colour combination is acceptable ( ie.
> > KSomeClass::areColorsAcceptable(foregroundColor,backgroundColor) ) and
> > if not, the application can fall back to something safer.
> 
> Yes, this is definitely something to keep in mind. The hope is that
> there will be enough roles to 'repurpose' existing ones (as I said
> previously, the roles are usage /suggestions/ not commandments ;-) ),
> but we may indeed want more than eight for that to be achievable.
> 
> --
> Matthew
> "In the beginning was the word, and the word was
> content-type: text/plain" -- Martin Schulze
> 
>