[RFC] Color usability time, take 2

[Matthew Woehlke]

Olaf Schmidt wrote:
> You can find a possible kate colour theme attached.

Will take a look as soon as I get a chance, thanks.

> Using a red background would also be a serious eye-catcher.

Not if your normal background is red :-).

> You suggestion was 5*12=60 colours.
> 
> We can reduce this number by  having the list background only for View, and 
> the 7 numbered colours only twice (background and foreground).

I think last time we were leaning towards using tinting to do that.

Also, there is already an application out there (I forget what, offhand) 
that wants the window alternate background color, so I think we should 
keep these.

I wonder if we should define the selection alternate background color as 
the one used when the selection does /not/ have input focus? (Right now 
we either don't distinguish - which is very bad for usability - or we 
use the window set in what is otherwise a view).

On second thought, that makes a really good argument for 
BackgroundFocused and FocusDecoration* (and I guess then BackgroundHover 
and HoverDecoration). But now we have 80 colors :-).

(*or I suppose Decoration{Focus,Hover} would be better for consistency)

> This would mean 5*4+1+2*7=35 colours.

Personally I like the neat ordering of 'color set, color role'. Keep in 
mind that I fully intend that the configuration will be set up in such a 
way that you only "need" to specify roles 3-8 once, unless you /want/ to 
override them. Also I think there are possibly instances where you do 
want the foreground colors to depend on the color set (if nothing else, 
saying that all foregrounds must work on all backgrounds is more 
limiting to users). Um, selection is probably a good example.

All that said, I'm thinking most users will set about 15 colors and 
leave the rest 'inherited'. Really, having umpteen color /in the API/ is 
a non-issue if the interface to configure them is well designed.

-- 
Matthew
"In the beginning was the word, and the word was
content-type: text/plain" -- Martin Schulze