Re: Default colors vs. gamma

[Alexander Malmberg]

Fred Kiefer wrote:
> Alexander Malmberg wrote:
> > (First, to clarify, all of this is for display on a screen. Other 
> > devices may need other adjustments.)
>
> Thats an important point, which also makes it clear that we should not 
> implemetn this behaviour in this bit of GUI, as this would effect every 
> output device, even a PS file.

True, although I don't consider the exact shade of gray of the system 
colors on the odd occasion that I print parts of our UI to be all that 
important. :-)

[snip]
> I don't really like the idea of "automagic", even when implemented 
> correctly it will only work for some people, others will be worse off. 
> And somehow I always feel like I might end up in the wrong group...

Noted; I guess I should count this as a vote for "make the user 
configure his system so we can do proper color adjustments".

> But now a question from my side: Why didn't you provide just a small 
> application to generate different system colour lists?

Because that wouldn't have let me change the default look (ie. the one 
that a new user with an unconfigured system would see).

> Or to but it even
> broader, why isn't anybody delivering different system colour lists for 
> GNUstep? Is it because they are to hard to generate? Do we need a user 
> itnerface for this?

There are apps to do this. Preferences has a pretty neat color module, 
and it isn't very hard to make the colors lighter there (although it 
does, as always, require that the user knows about all this and takes 
action). I've also written apps for more generic editing of colors 
(twice, iirc), but I'm not really sure what their state is now. Even a 
simple shell script would be enough to make all the standard colors 
brighter, though; it's just a matter of setting the right defaults.

As for why, I don't know. One possibility is that the complaints in this 
area are coming from (or on behalf of) users who are new to GNUstep, or 
who are just trying it out, and thus don't know that these apps exist 
(or who expect, not altogether unreasonably, that GNUstep should look 
good by default on their systems).

- Alexander Malmberg