Re: Re:

[M. Uli Kusterer]

At 1:55 Uhr +0000 19.02.2005, Nicolas Roard wrote:
> I doubt it's because it's "grey".  A *lot* of people (and I mean, 
> not just NeXT lovers, casual users) like the grey tonality, because 
> with it, the UI doesn't come in the way of the user. Having a gray 
> tonality is a good thing, particularly for graphics arts (because 
> then your eye isn't bothered with "wrong" colors).

 Well, lighting it up definitely would work for me.

> GNUstep's grey could be seen as a bit too dark, but it's more a 
> problem of tuning your display than it's because it's "grey". With a 
> wrong gamma correction, the contrast is often a bit too high and 
> thus it looks a bit ugly.. The livecd includes an application to 
> change your gamma, which is quite handy to show that.

 If it's as easy to use as Apple's calibration assistant, that may be 
a first step, but that's not all.

> But yes, the "base" gray is a bit too contrasted compared to the 
> highlight color on many displays; sure, you could say it's the 
> display fault (that would be true), but I think increasing slightly 
> the brightness of the base (window and control backgrounds) and 
> shadow colors would help a bit (see backbone's screenshots, even if 
> they are perhaps a bit too bright, it's the idea..)

Well, Backbone's screenshots (e.g. 
http://www.nongnu.org/backbone/images/screenshots/textedit-1.png) 
basically have the Windows grey...

Here's how I'd try to fix the look:

The disabled text in that shot really is too bright (at least on my 
screen). But one thing that I think rather needs some fixing is the 
shadows and highlights in comparison to active window title bars. 
Since the title bar is black, the shadow is actually brighter. 
Shadows are always darker in real life.

OTOH, on inactive window title bars, the shadow is absolutely black, 
like the border. So, in addition to slightly brightening the colors, 
I'd also brighten active window titles, but make their shadow darker 
in that case. Kind of like the "Info" window's title, not like the 
file picker. Same goes for the "return" arrow on the OK button. The 
black shadow should be a little lighter and its fill a tad darker, to 
make it look embossed. Essentially, I'd summarize this part as 
"fixing GNUstep to use a more natural color perspective".

Also, there mustn't be cutoff text like in the open panel's popup 
button. Either make the menu enlarge as needed (that's how OS X does 
it) or display an ellipsis at the end, but leave a little room from 
the edge.

That and Jesse's icons would probably fix most of my gripes. I 
personally would also like to see some gradients like Window maker 
has them on buttons, and maybe even a slight one on the key window's 
window title, but I wouldn't complain if those weren't an option.
--
Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
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