> If you try to google for this problem, you will also find people who
> explain that using a dark background is a better solution (not that I
> agree with that, sincerely I do not know). A nice property of my
> patch is that, if you select such an inverted theme in gnome, LyX
> will inherit it and (almost) look right. This is a good property. And
> people who change their general background will appreciate that LyX
> notices it.
I don't agree that every program should inherit the system-wide colors.
Every program has its own purpose and thus needs different ergonomics
settings. For example at work white is the system background default but
many programs set their own colors for good reasons. CAD programs use
e.g. light blue as background color. This might be strange but when you
are working with it, it is a nice choice for doing constructions in 3D.
When switching to 2D constructions, the background color is
automatically changed to white, which makes also sense in this context.
LyX's purpose is to write longer texts and your yellowish has been
proven useful for the users.
>> 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.
>
> And do they change the white background of other applications?
Sure. Some prefer black background and white text when doing 2D
constructions in e.g. AutCAD but use black on white when drawing
sketches with e.g. Adobe Illustrator.
>> I cannot remember any complaint about this.
>
> There have been some on lyx-devel.
I must have missed them. Do you have a pointer?
>>> * why are collapsable insets frames red?
>>
>> Let me ask you a question: Why is your favorite meal your
>> favorite one? The answer to this is the answer to your questions
>> here. We simply have to set a color.
>
> Yes, I was pointing out that this color should be the text color (or
> the inset background color, or the button color), but not yet another
> color that we picked just because we can.
I think this is in general a matter of taste. Some prefer a line as
border of an inset, some don't want a border at all since the different
inset color is enough to distinguish between an inset and the normal
text background.
Not having the text color as color for inset frames has for example the
advantage that the user can distinguish between things that are only
shown in LyX and those that are also in the output. The current color
scheme was originally designed to use black for things that appear by
default black in the output. Things that won't appear in the output have
a different color than the text color.
>>> The answer to all these questions is that somebody did it without
>>> much thinking and we got used to it.
>
> That is not fair. This color scheme was implemented for LyX 1.6 or
> 1.5 (I don't know exactly). I once proposed the scheme and other
> fine-tuned this after discussions. The result was then implemented
> and is what we have currently.
>
> This comment was not supposed to be a stab against you and I
> apologize if it looked personal. The fact is that each and every
> insets picks a new random color to display itself (green, yellow,
> red...).
I'm not personally offended but saying that we did not already think
about the colors is wrong and not fair to those who did. I'm wondering
that you didn't raise your voice the last time we discussed the color
scheme (must have been some months before 1.6.0 came out).
> To give a concrete example, it would make sense to me to use some
> dark grey for things that do not print but show structure of the
> document: spaces, newlines. I believe that even depth markers would
> benefit from being changed to a dark grey. The goal is reduce the
> number of things that jump at the eyes and make reading more
> difficult.
Fine with me. I'm generally open to fine-tune our color scheme. For
example what Rob said makes sense to me. I only have a strange opinion
about the background color that I want to keep as it is.
If the majority really wants to have a white or the system default color
as new default LyX background color, can you please implement an option
in the preferences to switch back to LyX's 1.6 color scheme?
Btw. as you are currently working at the color stuff, there is an open
issue I cannot solve: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6682
I implemented in the document settings to customize the background color
of notes and boxes. The problem is that the selected color is correctly
shown in the settings button and in the PDf output but not within LyX's
main window. can you please have a look or give me a hint where I can
start to fix this?
thanks and regards
Uwe
