Bug 335070

Summary: Folderview's filenames lack contrast on some wallpapers
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Leszek Lesner <leszek.lesner>
Component: Desktop icons & Folder View widgetAssignee: Eike Hein <hein>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: bhush94, jamboarder, kde, sebas
Priority: NOR Flags: jamboarder: VisualDesign+
Version: master   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Linux   
URL: http://abload.de/img/folderview-desktop_nelvofj.png
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Leszek Lesner 2014-05-20 09:46:56 UTC
Without shadows for the text underneath the icons the text becomes unreadable on certain wallpapers 

See: http://abload.de/img/folderview-desktop_nelvofj.png

Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 Sebastian Kügler 2014-05-22 12:40:05 UTC
Renaming: adding shadows is one way to improve readability, but not necessarily the solution here. The problem is readability due to lack of contrast, not necessarily missing shadows.
Comment 2 Eike Hein 2014-05-22 12:49:38 UTC
FWIW, I intentionally left out visual frills initially hoping for VDG pronouncement on these things - we had standard APIs for text effects in Plasma 1 that are gone now; for consistency we need to come up with proper replacements rather than add individual solutions everywhere.

Can someone please CC the proper address for the VDG?
Comment 3 Andrew Lake 2014-06-04 03:50:19 UTC
For text on unpredictable backgrounds, the ways I can think of dealing with this are:
1. Add a text background
2. Add a text shadow
3. Add a text outline

I'm open to other Ideas, but absent those, I'm partial to 1 or 2 depending on ease of implementation. I'm interested in developers thoughts on this since I think either approach will facilitate good visuals.
Comment 4 Eike Hein 2014-06-04 11:24:53 UTC
I'd say all of them have about similar complexity.

2.-3. most likely involve switching the text label to a custom C++ object - QML theoretically has a stock effects system for this, but I've never seen its drop shadow effect work correctly for FreeType-rasterized Text items on a variety of drivers, and it was slow as well. This is already the case for the Task Manager task button labels, which have a shadow/outline effect depending on the text color, implemented in C++.

1. Might require C++ as well, depending on whether the background should be clipped to actual line rects or the overall bounding box.

Could the VDG maybe iterate some mockups for what they think would:

(a) Fit in well with Breeze as top priority.
(b) Complement other similar use cases in the shell well (i.e. the consistent text effects issue).
(b) Have a generic-enough way of working that it could possibly be put under theme control to some degree.
Comment 5 Eike Hein 2014-06-17 06:53:33 UTC
*** Bug 336344 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Eike Hein 2014-06-20 01:42:11 UTC
Git commit 4a6813eb5f312d317738c582979a0619bfb4be1a by Eike Hein.
Committed on 20/06/2014 at 01:41.
Pushed by hein into branch 'master'.

Configurable text color in containment case.

M  +3    -0    containments/folder/package/contents/config/main.xml
M  +42   -0    containments/folder/package/contents/ui/ConfigIcons.qml
M  +1    -1    containments/folder/package/contents/ui/ItemDelegate.qml

http://commits.kde.org/plasma-desktop/4a6813eb5f312d317738c582979a0619bfb4be1a
Comment 7 Andrew Lake 2014-06-24 00:25:18 UTC
The change based on review request 118891 to add a text background has been committed (5819be4). 
The commit hook didn't close this bug since I don't have permissions on this bug report to do that. :-)

Hope this helps, and please let me know if there's anything else needed to close this bug.