agree. The color was black in earlier versions if I am not totally mistaken.

I confirm this bug on Evince 3.4.0 as installed with Ubuntu 12.04 64bits.
Please change status accordingly

(In reply to comment #0)
> The annotation font color (yellow) and the white background of the annotation
> makes the text very difficult to read. I suggest you keep the annotation
> overall color scheme but change the text color to black for maximum
> readability.

This can a problem with the theme.  Evince 3.4.0 in Ubuntu 12.04, and Adwaita,
the note has a light grey background with black foreground when viewing the
comment.  When editing, the background changes to white while the foreground
still is black.

That said, please, try with Adwaita theme.  If you can not reproduce the problem
with Adwaita, then the bug is in the theme.

However, where I see a problem is in the title of the comment (filled with the
author of the comment).

You're right about the color of the comment text :
it's yellow with Ambiance GTK theme, but black with Adwaita.

However as you noted, in both cases the title's text (user's name) is yellow.

Another thing : when I change the color of the note in the preference dialog, it only affects the frame of the annotation (only visible when the annotation is open). The icon of the annotation always stays yellow.

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > The annotation font color (yellow) and the white background of the annotation
> > makes the text very difficult to read. I suggest you keep the annotation
> > overall color scheme but change the text color to black for maximum
> > readability.
> 
> This can a problem with the theme.  Evince 3.4.0 in Ubuntu 12.04, and Adwaita,
> the note has a light grey background with black foreground when viewing the
> comment.  When editing, the background changes to white while the foreground
> still is black.
> 
> That said, please, try with Adwaita theme.  If you can not reproduce the
> problem
> with Adwaita, then the bug is in the theme.
> 
> However, where I see a problem is in the title of the comment (filled with the
> author of the comment).


It's true, I should change the title, any suggestions?

So the problem is in them theme, should I report to the theme owners then?

In my opinion the text should be readable with any theme, wouldn't it be best if it was configurable? Or always in black text over white background to ensure readability?

Well you could change the title of the bug as (may be) :
Annotation color troubles
(because there are several issues here)

Also you should report to the theme owner (so far only 2 themes tested ?)

As for improvements in evince, in the preferences dialog there could be several color adjustments :
- for comment font
- for comment font background
- for title font
- for [title font] background (the one which is now existing) ; this one should work for the annotation icons too

*** Bug 652009 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 692450 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment from the bug marked as duplicate:

"Using evince 3.6.1 with any of the Ubuntu theme:
 - open a pdf
 - change the sidebar to annotation
 - select "add"
 - click on the pen icon
 - click somewhere in the pdf
-> you get a note with a yellow border and white background
 - click in it, type some text
-> with adwaita the text is black
-> with light-themes the text is the same yellow as the border, which is not
readable on white

Comments from IRC:

<KaL> the annot window is creating a style properties and changing the color
and bg color, I have no idea why, though, I don't remember :-P
 see libview/ev-annotation-window.c
 in ev_annotation_window_set_color
 in gtk_style_properties_set
 try removing the color and set only the bg color
looks like a bug to me, I don't think we want to set both the fg and bg color
to be the same


I can confirm that dropping the "color" line in that function makes the text
being black the Ubuntu theme and fixes the issue"

(In reply to comment #9)
> [...]
> I can confirm that dropping the "color" line in that function makes the text
> being black the Ubuntu theme and fixes the issue"

In Adwaita the bug seems different.  If you click in the title of annotation window, it gets yellow.  Dropping that line also fixes the issue.

Title changed as per comment #6 (and it's more fair, the previous looks like it's a complain).

This has been fixed by Ubuntu downstream with the following patch:
diff -Nur evince-3.6.1/libview/ev-annotation-window.c evince-3.6.1.new/libview/ev-annotation-window.c
--- evince-3.6.1/libview/ev-annotation-window.c 2012-06-24 16:30:36.000000000 +0200
+++ evince-3.6.1.new/libview/ev-annotation-window.c     2013-01-25 15:11:08.734467181 +0100
@@ -145,7 +145,6 @@
         properties = gtk_style_properties_new ();
         gtk_style_properties_set (properties, 0,
-                                  "color", &rgba,
                                   "background-color", &rgba,
                                   NULL);
 
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/raring/evince/raring/revision/177

This is not upstreamed to http://git.gnome.org/browse/evince/.

Fixed in git master. Thank you all for your help with this issue.