[Pan-users] Re: How can I set pan2 to show white letters on black backgrounds on all panes?

[SciFi]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:02:01 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> SciFi <address@hidden> posted
> address@hidden, excerpted below,
> on  Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:35:06 +0000:
> 
> [Duncan wrote...]
> 
>>> As for the gtkrc files themselves, initially, my colors were set (and
>>> at least one of my files created) when I checked the box in KDE to
>>> export my prefs to non-KDE apps.  However, I've modified them a bit
>>> manually since then.  If you have no such files to serve as a starting
>>> place or otherwise might find mine useful, ask, and I'll post them.
>>> (One of the reasons I prefer KDE to GNOME is that the KDE settings are
>>> easier, both in the GUI and to set manually, than GTK/GNOME.  Some of
>>> the GTK settings can be rather obscure and aren't so intuitive, at
>>> least to me, so a file to start on can be quite useful.)  My
>>> background isn't black; I prefer a bit of color, but it's a
>>> middle-dark cadetblue, a bit darker than the named cadetblue4 but
>>> about the same blue-green-gray hue. Default text is white.  However,
>>> it should serve as a starting place, if you wish to edit them
>>> manually.
>> 
>> I've skimmed the provided html docs (I didn't want to scour all the
>> requisites for the gtk-doc pkg).  It's overwhelming -- what widget do I
>> modify for pan2 to get the colors I want, while not inadverently
>> changing other things ... etc. ...  ;)
> 
> As I said, "Some of the GTK settings can be rather obscure and aren't so
> intuitive, at least to me", and it would appear you agree.  =8^\
> "Overwhelming" as you said.  However, to try and concentrate on solving
> the immediate problem rather than pointing fingers, since it's not like
> we could do a lot about that anyway...
> 
>> I do see pan2's color settings for various "scores".  It'd be real nice
>> if Charles would put in some settings for the panes in general.  ;) 
>> I'm not too keen on the kind of programming needed, else I'd take a
>> stab at it myself (I get deep into the system stuff).
> 
> In older pan, there were a couple more settings.  However, I understand
> Charles' motivation in not including them again.  pan under Charles'
> leadership has had a reasonably strong anti-code-bloat policy, and from
> time to time he has removed features or minor options that not enough
> people use, thus keeping the code easy to work with, both adding new
> features and exterminating bugs.  While I'm not a major GTK/GNOME user,
> I agree with him that this falls in that category, particularly since
> there /are/ other ways to set it.  By contract, I did ask for and get a
> few more color settings, where choices were originally hard-coded in
> new- pan.  URL and sig color, in particular, were originally hard-coded,
> but difficult for me to see because the defaults simply didn't contrast
> sufficiently with my standard scheme color background.  Hard-coded
> foreground colors simply don't work when the background color isn't
> controlled by the app in question.   Luckily, Charles saw my point and
> added config options for them.
>  
>> So I wonder if you wouldn't mind posting enough to get started? I'd
>> really appreciate it.
> 
> Below my sig you'll find my user's gtkrc-2.0 file (attached as text/
> identity using my pan-attach-kd script, see the archive or my web page,
> listed below, if interested).  It's all KDE's doing, and looks to be all
> color save for the button-order thing.  I believe GTK's default button
> order is the same as Apple's, however, so you'll probably want to
> comment or delete that.
> 
> Below that is my system defaults gtkrc-2.0 file, which simply includes
> two others, so they follow in turn. (JED are my initials, which I
> frequently use to denote heavily customized files or backups thereof,
> knowing nothing else uses that extension so they aren't likely to get
> overwritten or whatever.)  The font file simply sets a font for the menu
> and etc that I find more workable.  You'll likely want to set something
> usable on your system for it.  The tooltips file is a workaround for a
> Qt issue (KDE's built on Qt, a toolkit much like GTK).  Qt seems to have
> hard-coded their tooltip background color to yellowish-white, and KDE
> didn't seem to allow for that, so with its settings, I was getting white
> text on the yellow-white background in tooltips, and that simply wasn't
> readable.
> 
> BTW, OT for pan but as a fellow light on dark preferences guy, you've
> likely been as frustrated as I was with web pages, either glaring white
> or worse yet, setting one of either foreground/text or background
> without setting the other, thus producing invisible text in many cases. 
> If so, you may wish to find and install privoxy, set your web browser to
> use it, and then run the privoxy filterset I've developed over the years
> to (normally) enforce a sane light text on dark background page scheme,
> without killing color entirely.  Basically, if a background is too
> light, it darkens it while keeping somewhat the same color, while doing
> the reverse for foregrounds/text that are too dark.  A bright red
> background will therefore end up muted dark red, while navy text will
> become ligher, toward robin's egg blue.  The biggest problem now is that
> privoxy just does an unchanged pass-thru on secure connections, thus
> killing the filters, so secure pages don't get run thru the color mod
> filter.  Anyway, I posted the filter online, but don't update it there
> all that frequently.  So... if you use it, simply check back every few
> months and see if I've increased the version number.
> 
> http://members.cox.net/pu61ic.1inux.dunc4n/

Got your file (it was "under" the "-- " signature, some news-readers 
would have cut that off as this quote did ;) ).

It's a bit dark on my "calibrated" Apple 23-inch HD display here.  ;)  
But it's a very good start as an actual working sample, I can understand 
what is being done there, pretty much what I thought the docs were saying.

As for the web-browsers, we're running nightly builds, so a WYSIWYG 
display is required as it goes during testing.  Some "user CSS" can 
probably do similar custom colourings, and be based on URLs IIUC to get 
around websites that don't look good.

btw there is a GTK-on-OSX project going on here:
<http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx>
I believe some ppl have actually gotten Pan to run in this system.
I might start investigating it.
It's one of those things: do you try making apps behave like Mac apps to 
appease that group of ppl, or do you make apps work under X11 so to 
appease /that/ group.  ;)  I see this as one thing Apple has been 
striving to do i.e. join the two standards together, as keyboards and 
mouse-click actions etc. still are different between the two groups.  At 
least things are quite customisable anymore, and there are published 
keyboard maps etc. to try letting each camp become accustomed in either 
windowing system.

Thank you again for posting your .gtkrc settings.  I'm going to be 
messin' with it for sure.  :)

(oh I did have to name it ~/.gtkrc-2.0)

(and I see there's a new update for Pango maybe others ... here we go 
again ;) )