GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 86216
Should control AND enable change of the Font Color for Icon Text
Last modified: 2012-02-20 16:44:54 UTC
I think this is a really important feature, what do you want to do if you change your Background Wallpaper from black to white ? Of course you want to change the font color to the opposite to get the sufficient Contrast. Until Today (Gnome2 built from cvsgnome 0.20 on June 19th using the latest tarballs) there is no easy way to change that. If Nautilus draws the Desktop then it should also provide the ability to change the Font Color for Desktop Icons. If Nautilus does not handle this, then at least there should be an option in the Gnome Settings, independent of the current used Windowmanager.
Very tempted to mark won't fix based on the resolution of bug 43974. Alex's (maintainer) fix for the problem of light (white) backgrounds was to add drop down shadows to desktop fonts (same solution used in mac osX, I think in principle he along with I and others don't want a preference for the desktop font color, it should just work). Therefore desktop fonts are always white regardless of the desktop background, but have black drop down shadows. There are some issues with the implementation, which to my knowledge are due to limitations in gnome canvas (see tigerts comments in bug 43974). This is my motivation for marking won't fix. However there is a potential accessibility issue here regarding high contrast backgrounds for users with impaired vision. CCing billH for comment, however if bill has no problem with the current implementation in regards to accessibility than i think this is wont fix.
I hope that it is still possible to change it through gtkrc.mine, Isn't it ? I don't understand why it is so difficult to implement that the font color could be controled, we have all other neat things which I bet are much much more difficult to implement. And yes, I was thinking of visual impaired people (therefore speaking of contrast) and as well as of New Users. If I show my colleagues, what wonderfull UI Gnome is, and they ask me to change the font color, should I say than, we have this and that feature, but no, it's not possible to easily change the font color. I really appreciate that it is finally possible to change the Font Size without recompiling, and that Nautilus got finally a delete Button to add to the context menu like GMC had. Maybe I'm wrong but I cover this a basic functionality.
Well you've been able to change the font size in nautilus since 1.0.x and the delete option has been there since then as well, but these are peripheral issues. It is not that implementing this is hard. The issue is that the ui is ugly and to the best of my knowledge the developers prefer the current behavior. Users shouldn't have to be concerned with font colors. So yes in theory nautilus should use the rc colors for fonts however this is unrealistic in reality where background colors change, In the icon view nautilus uses an algorithm to choose either white or black fonts, on the desktop nautilus uses drop down shadows on white fonts since desktop images can be more than one color so the algorithm doesn't work as well there, plus these look really good. As I mentioned the current drop down shadow implementation is not perfect and the developers are aware of this. Given this imho you shouldn't need a preference to fix broken behavior, eg. choosing to use a light background shouldn't force the user to fix the interface by changing the font color, this should just work, no preference should be needed. In general very light backgrounds are not used by most users anyway as they are very harsh on the eyes. The notable exception here is of course those individual who have visual disabilities. It is very likely that some users will need to use a high contrast background (pure white) this is why i am ccing bill about any accessibility issues here. However short of an accessibility issue our current solution is the correct one and imho nautilus should not provide a pref.
OK, I have to clear some things first: 1. I'm using Gnome2 RC1 right now for testing, so far I'm still using Gnome-1.4 together with GMC. I always annoyed myself about that you could not change the Font Size without recompiling GMC. But at least (even if it took long to find out) I could change the Color in gtkrc.mine 2. I had the Problem with the Nautilus Delete Button when I was setting up a Mandrake 8.1 Box for a friend, I researched and couldn't find it. I don't know exactly which version 8.1 shipped with. 3. I really like Nautilus like it is right now (the major thing for disliking it was Performance, however I always liked it's design and the look and feel. > Given this imho you > shouldn't need a preference to fix broken behavior, eg. > choosing to > use a light background shouldn't force the user to fix the > interface by changing the font color, this should just work, no > preference should be needed. And this is exactly where I totally disagree, I have checked today the proposed heuristic, changed my background from gradient to solid white color however the fonts didn't changed to black.Beside of this, I want to control which colors the fonts should have, if I have a darkblue background, then Nautilus will (if it would work) change the Font Color to White, but what if I would like to have a Yellow Font ?. The Solution you mention is a clever solution, making it easy for newcomers, but will bounce the more experienced User. <Example> If you drive a Car and have a Navigation System in it, then this would be great, your Car is responsible for calculating the Route. It should not be your task to touch the Steering Wheel to correct bad or wrong calculated Routes, this should simply work and be the task of the Navigation System, No driver's Input should be necessary to drive the Car. This is all fine, but what if you want to drive another Route (which maybe be not the shortest Route) because you want to buy something at a small shop on the way ? I think then you should have the ability to drive the Car on your own. Also if I own a car I want to have the power of directing it where to go, not the Car directing me. Same goes here, it's my Computer and I want to have the power of telling the Computer what to do, not the computer telling me what is good for me. </Example>
There seems to be a major misunderstanding about system preferences regarding fonts, colors, etc. It simply is *never* acceptable from an accessibility point of view to disable this, or decide that some application-or-domain-specific setting obviates the need to adhere to system settings. All the text on the screen which conveys information to the user must be configurable to match system settings, or be a configurable part of those settings. If you have system font size or color, but a major part of the desktop fails to allow setting of the size or color, then the system is unusable from the point of view of someone who needs those settings. Drop-shadows under white text may help visibility for some users but it's not the same as respecting system settings. My point is that if it's worthwhile to be able to change system font size or color, it should be possible to do this for all parts of the desktop, i.e. icon labels, GTK+, the panel, the terminal (within the limits of monospaced fonts, etc.). It's OK to make some of these settings independent, in other words to make it possible to use different color or font settings in terminals versus Nautilus, but these settings should be grouped together. This isn't just about accessibility, if I want blue text on a while background I will find it annoying if I can't do it in the Nautilus icon list or the desktop! But indeed from an accessibility point of view it's a lot worse than just annoying...
*** Bug 86468 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 86513 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Adjusting priority as per a11y discussion with bill. Adding also string and doc keywords.
Should nautilus use the darkest and the lightest colors of the Gtk+ theme for the desktop window text ?
Bastien, I would say lightest for the desktop as nautilus now does drop down shadows for the desktop icon text. For most themes where the default font color is black I would think the desktop should use white text like it currently does...just my opinion though
You misunderstood me. I meant actual text -> lightest colour in the theme, drop-shadow -> darkest colour in the theme. I'd like to know if this would be enough for the a11n people, before I work on a patch.
Bill, Calum: is Hadess's proposal sufficient?
I just committed a fix that allows a gtk theme to force nautilus to draw a backdrop on file labels. This isn't on by default because it looks sort of ugly. This fixes the accessibility aspects of this bug, so I'm removing some keywords.
I really don't understand something here. All what I original wanted was a simple UI of setting the font color, I don't know why this UI should be ugly. It could be the same like the UI for setting the background. Even in Windows you can set your Font Color. I don't get the meaning of why you make it more complicated then it could be, as detecting what color the background is and then adjusting the font color to that. Wouldn't it far more easier (and mor beatiful) to just let the User choose his color ? (OK, from the accessability standpoint you're absolutley right, with doing it this way) When I have a black background, what will the font color be ? Of course white, like it is right now. I prefer more to have it yellow then white with this background. Currently I have no way of doing this and this leaves a strange taste for me. //Carsten
Yeah, what you wanted wasn't implemented, which is why the bug hasn't been closed. Some people had taken your bug report and turned it in to an accessibility thing; I fixed the accessibility aspects that they had added to the bug (after some discussion with bill), and thus mentioned it here. Your original bug is still intact and unfixed. Sorry if there was any confusion.
@dave I'm glad, thanx
*** Bug 97183 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Using ThinAndMild gtk2 theme (dark theme), text of icons in Nautilus windows is black and it is unreadable because of the dark background. Does this issue belongs to this bug, or is it a bug in ThinAndMild theme ? If so how can I change icon text color in gtkrc ?
Created attachment 13666 [details] Snapshot of Nautilus window
Ok, the solution is to add "NautilusIconContainer::frame_text = 1" in the gtkrc file. I found this line in the HighContrastInverse theme gtkrc file.
*** Bug 105407 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Removing the string keyword since I can't see any string change mentioned in here now.
*** Bug 339573 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
In GNOME/Nautilus 2.14 I color of icons text in Desktop is always white, even if I choose white background :( Should I report another bug about this ?
I think so, yes Mantas. Thanks!
This should work as expected at least since 3.2.