Hi Uwe, > What? There is absolutely no need to change a well-discussed thing that has > been proven useful for > the users. And no, i don't think we should change the color scheme for every > new release like e.g. > Gnome did in the past. There is simply no advantage for the user. If the user > dislikes our color > scheme, he can easily customize it. > > I have btw. not yet seen any LyX user at my university who switched from our > yellowish to white as > background, but they changed other colors. So there must be a good reason for > the users that they > keep our default.
As a LyX user, I also don't use a white background for editing. As you say, it's a bit intense. In fact the salmon (or is it desaturated mauve) background doesn't bother me at all. I've used it happily for quite some time. What does get me, though, are the other choices. The note background is far too intense, for example. The color is fine, but it really should be desaturated, a lot. Ditto for math frame and the other background colors. Edward Tufte has a great chapter on color for interfaces and data displays in his book Envisioning Information. On page 82, he shows an example of a map that shouldn't have ever been allowed in print. Unfortunately, the default LyX color scale and this map share about 10 colors in common. I'm not trying to (completely) defame the default color choices, since they are based on sound design principles. (Like I said, black on white isn't great.) But I certainly think that they could be tweaked. I'll parade out my "theming engine" idea. Maybe we could save lists of colors and provide two, or three options? This would also allow us to tweak the default theme for a particular platform. My only real complaint about LyX is that it doesn't mesh with Mac OS X very well, and optimizing the colors could go a long way to helping that situation. Again, just my two cents. Cheers, Rob
