K-Menu - High-lighting a bit too subtle

[Duncan]

Bogus Zaba posted on Mon, 11 Aug 2014 08:29:08 +0100 as excerpted:

> It was Kickoff I was talking about, so your advice (above) on this was
> relevant. The only problem is that although changing the theme
> (including changing it just for "Kickoff" using the details tab),
> changes various aspects of the display, the one thing that remains
> constant for all themes I have tried is the method of highlighting the
> items under the cursor. This is done by drawing two light grey lines
> above and below the item to be highlighted (on a white background).

OK, now that I know it's kickoff you're looking at, I actually did some 
experimenting, and found out that it's actually only the kickoff frame 
that's affected by the plasma/workspace theme.

The good news is that I found out what to change to change the kickoff 
menu highlighting.  The bad news is that changing that changes some other 
things too, and at least here, some of those things I want light and some 
dark, which makes for a challenge, to say the least.

The setting is actually in kde's main colors, found in kde system 
settings, common appearance and behavior, application appearance.

Once there, I *STRONGLY* recommend reading the help text (also available, 
if installed, in khelpcenter, system settings modules, colors), because 
there's a two-dimensional color organization, sets vs roles, that 
definitely takes some reading and then a bit of experimentation to get 
the hang of, but without that reading, the stuff that changes with each 
config change will seem almost random and the result will be VERY quick 
frustration!

Once you've read the help text and at least have an idea of what color 
sets and roles are all about, then it's time to try to change this, 
without making something else too horribly wrong.

First, if you've changed anything else from whatever color scheme you 
started with, you should probably save your changes to a new scheme that 
you can always reset to if you don't like how the changes ended up.  If 
not, first just make sure you know what scheme you're on so again you can 
reset back to it.  With that done...

Switch to the colors tab.

There are two ways to set the particular setting we're after.  It's 
available as either common colors, selection background, or selection 
set, normal background.

The kickoff menu background, meanwhile, is available as common colors, 
view background, or as view set, normal background.

So you have a selection set, normal background, set off on a view set, 
normal background.  Change either one to contrast with the other, hit 
apply, and you should immediately see the effect on the kickoff menu.

The problem is everything else that's affected as well.  Major parts of 
most windows will be view background, so changing it changes a lot.  
Selection background should be a bit easier to change since it's only 
used in the less common selection context, but be sure to select some 
text in some window somewhere (the khelpcenter window is a good place, if 
you still have it open) and be sure the effect isn't worse than the one 
you're fixing in kickoff.

Good luck, and hope you find something that works.  I know from 
experience that keeping all colors working well together can be a 
challenge, to say the least.

Meanwhile, for completeness since I mentioned it earlier tho it turned 
out not to be needed here after all, workspace themes are found in 
/<prefix>/share/apps/desktoptheme/<themename>/.  The colors file found 
within has the same sort of categories and roles as above, but they only 
apply to plasma, and as we've seen here, actually only to part of 
plasma.  <prefix> should be something like /usr/ for distro installed 
themes, or ~/.kde/ for user installed themes, so the default oxygen theme 
colors file should be found at /usr/share/apps/desktoptheme/oxygen/colors.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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