[okular] [Bug 384267] New: Found text (ctrl-f) highlight color should use System Settings "selection background" color, not be hard-coded yellow

[Frank Myhr]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384267

            Bug ID: 384267
           Summary: Found text (ctrl-f) highlight color should use System
                    Settings "selection background" color, not be
                    hard-coded yellow
           Product: okular
           Version: 1.0.0
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
          Assignee: okular-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: fmyhr at fhmtech.com
  Target Milestone: ---

Since Macintosh System 6.5 days (showing my age!) I've set my text highlight
color to a bright purple. This color's rare use in documents, my general liking
for purple, and my long use of it for this purpose all conspire to quickly draw
my eyes to highlighted text. I'm sure other users have their own equally valid
preferences for text highlight color. KDE accommodates all of us by allowing
each of us to set:

System Settings: Appearance: Colors: Edit Scheme: Colors: Common Colors:
Selection Background

just how we like it. Most applications pick up this system setting and things
Just Work(TM) as each of us wants.

It appears that Okular does pick up and use the system-wide "Selection
Background" color for its "Selection" tool. But then it seems to use a
hard-coded bright yellow to highlight the background of text found via ctrl-f.
At least, I've been unable to find a way to change this color to anything but
the default bright yellow.

Although this bright yellow often works acceptably to highlight found text, not
being able to change it causes these problems:

Problem 1)
Using bright yellow to highlight found text conflicts with using the same
bright yellow by default for Reviews: Pop-up Note, Inline Note, and
Highlighter. This can make it difficult or impossible to locate highlighted
found text in a heavily marked-up document.

Several bugs have been opened over the years regarding this problem:
Bug 355043 - Cannot differentiate between review and search highlights
Bug 244049 - Search/find highlighting color should be different from annotation
highlighting color 
Bug 237014 - Find tool when text has been highlighted 
Bug 273968 - Usability: change highlight color for text search and/or
annotation 
Bug 330158 - Default colour of search highlighting is almost the same as
annotation colour.
Bug 317824 - Highlight color of search term is overlapping with annotation
Bug 311034 - default search result and highlight colours are the same -
usability problem

Partial solution 1a)
Newer Okular allows each of these Reviews colors to be changed, and that is
much appreciated. But that alone does not completely solve this problem,
because bright yellow is such a traditional color (and thus excellent default
choice) for highlighting and sticky notes. A far better solution in my opinion
is to keep using bright yellow for these Reviews purposes, and to change the
found text background highlight color.

Partial solution 1b)
As noted in
Bug 375735 - Option to change default highlight search color
there's a patch on the way to draw a black outline around found text to help
highlight it. While helpful, I'd argue that this is also an incomplete solution
to this problem. A bright color is far more effective than a black outline at
drawing my eyes to highlighted found text. Especially when working with
documents like forms that already contain many black-outlined boxes.

Problem 2) Hard-coding the found text highlight color is contrary to what users
expect. Especially since KDE allows us to customize so many colors and themes
to our liking, it's natural to assume that there's a KDE setting *somewhere*
that will allow changing Okular's found text highlight color. So we spend time
searching for the right setting to change, becoming increasingly frustrated
when we can't find it. And eventually filing bugs like this one and the others
linked.


Proposed solution)
I respectfully suggest that a future version of Okular highlight found text
using the background color from

System Settings: Appearance: Colors: Edit Scheme: Colors: Common Colors:
Selection Background

or another system-wide setting if that one is deemed more appropriate.

Sincerely,
Frank

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