Bug 342934

Summary: Transparency in kickoff menu makes stuff hard to read
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Albert Astals Cid <aacid>
Component: generalAssignee: David Edmundson <kde>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: bhush94, cfeck, kde, nikohuma, notmart, sander.salazar
Priority: NOR    
Version: 5.1.2   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: kickoff menu transparency issue
breeze transparency, can't read the subtitle either
gray on gray
black menu white panel
KDE with Blur enabled and "BG Contrast" disabled
KDE with Blur and "BG Contrast" enabled

Description Albert Astals Cid 2015-01-16 20:52:10 UTC
Created attachment 90462 [details]
kickoff menu transparency issue

See the attached screenshot, i can barely read what's in the kickoff menu because of the transparency.
Comment 1 Albert Astals Cid 2015-01-16 21:17:04 UTC
Created attachment 90463 [details]
breeze transparency, can't read the subtitle either

The previous screenshot is breeze dark, this one is breeze
Comment 2 David Edmundson 2015-01-16 21:33:32 UTC
From IRC chats:
 - background contrast kwin effect isn't loaded
 - using xrender as the compositor which AFAIK doesn't have that effect


We should be falling back to the opaque SVGs if we realise  we don't have blur, not sure why it isn't.
Comment 3 Marco Martin 2015-01-26 13:56:35 UTC
i think it is doing correctly, just those svgs aren't opaque enough.
just needs the theme to be fixed
Comment 4 Marco Martin 2015-01-26 13:59:44 UTC
hmm, nope, the theme is fine, here looks good.
so it's getting the translucent/ image for some reason
Comment 5 Niko Humalamäki 2015-02-02 09:32:18 UTC
Created attachment 90868 [details]
gray on gray

Breeze-dark on archlinux
breeze:  5.2.0
plasma-desktop: 5.2.0
plasma-workspace: 5.2.0
Comment 6 Niko Humalamäki 2015-02-02 09:36:45 UTC
I also played around with rendering options, and they didn't have an effect on this.
Comment 7 Niko Humalamäki 2015-02-03 08:00:25 UTC
Now I created a fresh user and tested and there still is white text on gray background on breeze-dark theme with breeze-dark colors. On normal breeze the texts are fine in application launcher. 

Also I didn't mention that the menu looks good when rendering is turned off.
Comment 8 Niko Humalamäki 2015-02-25 07:21:53 UTC
Created attachment 91288 [details]
black menu white panel

White panel, black kick-off.
Comment 9 Niko Humalamäki 2015-02-25 07:28:18 UTC
An now the panel is white and kickoff is black. I really don't know when this happened.  This bug gives really bad image of kde, please be sure this is fixed before kf5 is moving to major distros. I could take a look on this also, but right now I have very little time. If there are some documented steps somewhere on how to deal with the theme development, maybe I could arrange time. Look screenshot "black menu white panel".

arch package versions:

breeze 5.2.0-2
plasma-desktop 5.2.0-2
plasma-workspace 5.2.0-5
Comment 10 Niko Humalamäki 2015-03-11 08:43:43 UTC
Maybe my previous comment was a bit harsh, since probably lot of people don't use the black theme, so not necessarily a very critical thing on giving a good impression. Also I have not mentioned, that I have intel integrated graphics and renderer is set to OpenGL 2.0 and GLX-interface.
Comment 11 Kai Uwe Broulik 2015-03-14 12:39:24 UTC
Well, it seems like you're not using compositing. Check whether it's enabled by default in System Settings → Display → Compositor, or toggle it on using Ctrl+Shift+F12
Comment 12 Niko Humalamäki 2015-03-15 14:19:45 UTC
Actually it works when I turn the compositing off. In the screenshots the composing is on. I now realized that the normal breeze theme also has black themes for applications and it seems that only the panels and widgets are white, so I'm now fine with the normal version.
Comment 13 Niko Humalamäki 2015-03-15 14:23:47 UTC
Sorry I'm flooding again. I'm fine with "Breeze Dark" color theme and "Breeze" desktop theme now.
Comment 14 David Edmundson 2015-03-28 16:25:12 UTC
There was a patch in plasma-framework to correct reading if the compositor supports background blur.

5e53bd4d5768a3b7c8eb6a7482c5462f3315c24b on Feb 23 2015.

Does this problem still exist with that patch? Please reopen if so.
Comment 15 Niko Humalamäki 2015-04-09 09:23:32 UTC
The patch should already be in arch linux plasma-framework package, and it does not solve the problem.

pkg version:
plasma-framework 5.8.0-1

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/43670

I don't know how to open the bug, also I didn't open this, I just added comments to a bug, that seamed related to this.
Comment 16 Sander Salazar 2015-04-15 14:34:49 UTC
I'd like to confirm this bug in both Kubuntu Vivid's and OpenSUSE implementations. Breeze-dark only works when I disable the composition. In both I have Frameworks Version 5.8.0 and Plasma 5.2 with Intel Drivers.
Comment 17 Sander Salazar 2015-04-15 14:49:20 UTC
Also, for whatever reason, If I disable "Translucency", "Blur" and "Background Contrast", Apply and re-enable "Blur" and/or "Background Contrast" it works again but if I enable either  instead of both, the effects changes.

I will proceed to attach screenshots.
Comment 18 Sander Salazar 2015-04-15 14:53:19 UTC
Created attachment 92060 [details]
KDE with Blur enabled and "BG Contrast" disabled
Comment 19 Sander Salazar 2015-04-15 14:54:39 UTC
Created attachment 92061 [details]
KDE with Blur and "BG Contrast" enabled
Comment 20 Kai Uwe Broulik 2015-06-08 15:33:55 UTC
Git commit d65c0ed1d07b4fb09643c9401a6697db1282d89e by Kai Uwe Broulik.
Committed on 08/06/2015 at 15:30.
Pushed by broulik into branch 'master'.

Bind translucent theme to background contrast rather than blur effect

Only the background contrast effect provides real contrast for contents, the blur effect
doesn't improve readability that much; so we now use the translucent theme only when we
have the background contrast effect. This significantly improves readability.

CHANGELOG: An opaque theme is now used when only the blur effect is available
REVIEW: 124039
Related: bug 348154

M  +12   -15   src/plasma/private/theme_p.cpp
M  +2    -3    src/plasma/private/theme_p.h

http://commits.kde.org/plasma-framework/d65c0ed1d07b4fb09643c9401a6697db1282d89e
Comment 21 Niko Humalamäki 2015-06-16 07:29:09 UTC
Works here on arch. Great :)