blue text on black background dark theme blues

imschmeg · 2019-12-04 03:49:36

I'm running xfce 4.14.1 on debian buster (MX 19), and I can't read my to-do list in orage, because in any dark theme where orage has a dark background, the calendar window to-do list text is dark blue.

What's the necessary magic to change the color of that text without impacting the rest of the theme?

imschmeg · 2019-12-06 21:05:18

Some sleuthing on my own...

Orage in Xfce 14.1.4 is still apparently GTK2 themed. I'm using Matcha-dark-sea theme. I don't know what symbolic name the dark blue text has in GTK2, but I do know its color is #0000ff or something close. A suitable regex would be something like '#[0-3].[0-3].[c-fC-F].'

I first looked in /usr/share/themes/Matcha-dark-sea/gtk-2.0/gtkrc with the above regex. No colors there match.

I also looked in ../xfwm4/themerc. No colors there match.

I even looked in ../gtk-3.0 for that regex - no matches. Also looked at the "rgba" calls - nothing skewed blue (needed an extended [grep -E] regex for this: rgba\([1-9]?[0-9], *[1-9]?[0-9], *1[0-9][0-9])

I then looked in the *.rc files with the same regex - no matches.

However, there are shade/mix calls. None of the shade calls could produce such a blue unless the input color was already sufficiently blue, and none are (unless I am misunderstanding shade). For the mix calls, fortunately, there are very few, and most work with nearly balanced r vs. g vs. b colors (like base_color, which is #222b2e), and so can't produce anything skewed very blue. One color in gtkrc that is skewed at all is #2eb398 for selected_bg_color . But that's only mixed once, and with fg_color, which is #f0f0f0 - hence can't be skewed blue (unless I am misunderstanding mix).

Is there any place else I should look for such a color setting?

If not, then conclusion is that Orage, Xfce's own calendar app, has hard-coded blue some text (to-do listing, at least), making it incompatible with all dark themes. Well, maybe it's OK with themes having a dark orange background. But that would be hideous.

ToZ · 2019-12-06 22:56:09

Yes, I believe it is hard coded. See: https://git.xfce.org/archive/orage/tree … box.c#n847.

imschmeg · 2019-12-07 00:28:34

I guess I could change the definition of "blue", as seen by gtk_color_parse...

Anyone know how to do that?

imschmeg · 2019-12-07 01:08:51

If not, then one alternative is to clone orage and recode it. Yeah - doable - but kind of the opposite of "theming".

ToZ · 2019-12-07 01:57:53

BTW, orage has been archived and is no longer being actively developed.

imschmeg · 2019-12-07 02:34:36

Yeah, I know about orage. Too bad - it is ultra-light and does the right things, although the interface is lacking. There are many either too-light (cli, or nearly so) or too-heavy alternatives. I'm not asking for orage to be patched to fix this.

Also, it is a problem I've had with some other apps that do dark themes properly in most ways (background colors, most text), but keep some - usually blue - text around. I was hoping that answers on orage would help me solve these others as well.

ozjd · 2019-12-08 23:29:46

I noticed this too and my solution was to use a dark grey theme rather than a very dark theme.Works better for a lot of apps. I'm currently using Shades of Grey https://github.com/WernerFP/Shades-of-gray-theme

Aravisian · 2019-12-20 02:53:31

imschmeg wrote:

I'm running xfce 4.14.1 on debian buster (MX 19), and I can't read my to-do list in orage, because in any dark theme where orage has a dark background, the calendar window to-do list text is dark blue.
What's the necessary magic to change the color of that text without impacting the rest of the theme?

I am still clinging desperately to XFCE 4.12
However, I just downloaded and installed Orage to test this. Please keep in mind, all my installed themes include a gtk2 portion as well as gtk3 portion.
As I cycled through all my themes, with the Calendar open, the colors changed per theme in the calendar. Please let me know if this is an invalid test because I am missing something or doing something incorrectly.
But the implication is that Orage follows your theme.

IF It does... Changing the color of the text without changing the rest of the theme would require isolating it in a resource file and noting it to use a certain color text.
However, that should be unnecessary as the theme text should already be set against the standing .rc base color, anyway.
You may just need a working gtk2 and gtk3 theme.

ozjd · 2019-12-20 03:11:05

Aravisian wrote:

Please let me know if this is an invalid test because I am missing something or doing something incorrectly.
But the implication is that Orage follows your theme.

To test you would need to create some overdue tasks and view the to do list. Yes Orage does follow the theme but the overdue tasks are always dark blue so appear to be hard coded to that colour.

Aravisian · 2019-12-20 03:44:58

ozjd wrote:

Aravisian wrote:
Please let me know if this is an invalid test because I am missing something or doing something incorrectly.
But the implication is that Orage follows your theme.
To test you would need to create some overdue tasks and view the to do list. Yes Orage does follow the theme but the overdue tasks are always dark blue so appear to be hard coded to that colour.

I set up some To Do tasks to end in an hour. Will test anyway and see if there is anything that can be worked with.Edit I set three and one for five mins, see below

Last edited by Aravisian (2019-12-20 03:51:00)

Aravisian · 2019-12-20 03:52:12

Ok, one of them past due- I am looking at the To Do Window, the Reminder Window and the Set Window and the text in each follows the theme and is White. Am I missing a window?

Aravisian · 2019-12-20 04:12:29

Ok, I see the Blue background color on the Timestamp of the alert, now. Flag and title remain white. When I click it, it turns white, too. It's not hard to read on my current dark theme, but I can see how it would be an issue with a different theme base color. But again, clicking on it turns it white.

So, I searched for the Orage File that determines this.
I found it in /usr/share/orage/doc/C/ orage.html

See here:

<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><title>Orage</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../xfce.css" type="text/css"><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.75.1"><link rel="home" href="#orage" title="Orage"><link rel="next" href="#orage-intro" title="Introduction"></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div lang="en"

Easy to find it in the file because it is right at the top.See that big 'ol #0000ff smirking? Search the doc with ctrl-f to find #0000ff, if you need.
I had to open it with Geany because Mousepad squeaked. (Mousepad refused to recognize file format and opening it with Firefox did not work, either. I don't know why...)

I changed the #0000ff to #ffffff and it worked on my screen to Rid the Blue.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I should point out, log-out/in to see changes or restart Orage App to see changes.
I changed that Blue Text to Red, White and a really ugly green while testing it.

Last edited by Aravisian (2019-12-20 04:28:56)

ozjd · 2019-12-20 05:45:07

Good find, thanks for your work. Hope this helps the OP.

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#1 2019-12-04 03:49:36

blue text on black background dark theme blues

#2 2019-12-06 21:05:18

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#3 2019-12-06 22:56:09

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#4 2019-12-07 00:28:34

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#5 2019-12-07 01:08:51

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#6 2019-12-07 01:57:53

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#7 2019-12-07 02:34:36

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#8 2019-12-08 23:29:46

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#9 2019-12-20 02:53:31

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#10 2019-12-20 03:11:05

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#11 2019-12-20 03:44:58

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#12 2019-12-20 03:52:12

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#13 2019-12-20 04:12:29

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

#14 2019-12-20 05:45:07

Re: blue text on black background dark theme blues

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