Re: [Pan-users] Size of Toolbar icons; canot read 'tooltips' text

[Duncan]

Maurice posted on Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:00:45 +0000 as excerpted:

> Now using PAN 0.140, I cannot find a way of making the toolbar icons
> bigger, or making the 'tooltip' text readable (seems to be pale yellow
> on a grey background)!
> 
> Where have I omitted to look, please?

There's a number of variables to consider here.

First, is your pan a gtk2 or gtk3 based build?  (Check package 
dependencies or run ldd /path/to/pan and see.)  For years gtk2 has been 
recommended as there /used/ to be mysterious issues with a gtk3 build 
that "magically" disappeared with a build against gtk2, but there has 
been some discussion of a renewed push to test and fix any remaining gtk3-
based issues, recently.  But I'm still running a gtk2-based build here.

Second, what desktop environment?  If it's a gtk-based DE, there's a fair 
chance that the generic DE configuration will affect both icon size and 
tooltip colors, particularly if your DE's gtk-base matches that of pan.

If you're running a non-gtk-based DE, however, and haven't separately 
installed the appropriate gtk-config tools, you'll have to configure 
things manually.  

I'm a long-time kde, now (kde-)plasma, user, and that's qt-based, so I've 
had similar issues and had to do a semi-manual config.  Unfortunately it 
has been long ago enough now that I don't remember the details, but I'll 
see what I can find probing my own config...

FWIW, I didn't worry too much about gtk2 (and thus pan) icon size here.  
These days I run big-screen TVs as monitors so size isn't the issue it 
might have been before, but the size was always big enough to hit, and as 
long as the tooltips were readable, I was fine, so tooltip readability 
was what I focused on and ultimately fixed.

FWIW(2), kde/plasma has long had in its color settings config a checkbox 
to apply colors to non-qt-based apps as well.  From what I've seen that 
means at least gtk-based; I'm honestly not sure what beyond that it 
applies to, but most of my non-qt/kde apps are gtk anyway, and it applies 
to them, tho it does /not/ seem to apply to the xorg/motif based tools, 
etc.

But I too had the unreadable tooltips issue, as I said, many years ago 
(kde3 era, so VERY long ago in kde terms!).  I suspect it was at the time 
due to the fact that I prefer a "reverse" color-scheme, light text on a 
dark background, and while kde was applying my kde color scheme to most 
gtk elements, including either the foreground or background of the 
tooltip (IDR which) , it wasn't applying it to the other one, so I ended 
up with either light on light or dark on dark tooltips.  Either way, it 
was unreadable and needed fixed.

I've not had the problem since, but I'm honestly not sure whether it's 
because kde/plasma fixed that problem and applies its colors to both 
foreground and background of the tooltip, or if my fixes from years ago 
continue to stick, all these years later.  For all I know kde/plasma 
fixed the problem, but my fix is still applying as well, overriding the 
kde/plasma fix.

So now to rummaging around in my config, trying to see what controls the 
gtk2 tooltip colors...

<oops>

It just started raining outside, and I remember a big storm was forcast 
for this evening... and last time a big storm came thru the lights 
blinked and the computer rebooted... more than once until I just shut it 
off for a few hours... so I'm going to send this now and finish later...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman