Bug 406239

Summary:	Selected Positive and Negative text roles have poor contrast
Product:	[Plasma] Breeze	Reporter:	Alexander <koshka>
Component:	Color scheme	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	filipfila.kde, karl, nate, postix
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Kubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:	https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/commit/792023a34a874f8998c944d691e55951b821bd0d	Version Fixed In:	5.23
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	screenshot of Dolphin with Breeze theme screenshot of Dolphin with April theme screenshot of Firefox with original Breeze theme screenshot of Firefox with modified Breeze theme screenshot of Thunderbird with original Breeze theme screenshot of Thunderbird with modified Breeze theme modified Breeze theme for gtk-2.0 modified Breeze theme for gtk-3.20

Description Alexander 2019-04-05 03:48:21 UTC

I would like to see better contrast for selected items in Plasma.
To start with, I mean selected folders in Dolphin in the sidebar or in the main frame.
In Breeze theme you are using a white font on a light-blue background so selected text is actually worse visible than a usual one.

I believe you have checked some guides and they said that the contrast is fine.
I also didn't find any complaints from other users on the matter (though they complain on pale fonts).
I also might be advised to use high contrast theme...

But I'm not blind and actually like Breeze theme in each aspect except its accent color, especially when it is used for text selection.

It's true that the theme is highly customizable in Plasma through the special GUI,  but there are 2 problems:
1) background color also affects progressbar color so after changing the former, the latter becomes invisible when selected (selected row in qbittorrent, for example)
2)There is no GUI for GTK theme so it is needed to change appropriate lines in a huge file for GTK-theme.

Changing background color for GTK application is extremely important because most of the problems with selection color I got from Thunderbird and Firefox where I want to see the text better if I selected it.

Now I'm using #2d82ac as a background color for selections.
It would be nice to have a variant of Breeze with a deeper accent color which would affect GTK apps too.

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2019-04-25 09:58:47 UTC

You did report this for Oxygen, but talk about Breeze. Could you clarify exactly which color scheme has insufficient contrast?

Comment 2 Christoph Feck 2019-05-14 23:28:22 UTC

If you can provide the information requested in comment #1, please add it.

Comment 3 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:06:09 UTC

Sorry, I meant Breeze theme. I will try to change "Product" field now.

Some time ago I found a theme that almost fit my needs. It is "April" theme for Plasma. This theme good as it is and has good contrast for selected items but I also changed its title bar color and made fonts completely black.

After my last post I've tested a large number of GTK themes to find a suitable one but although some of them have desired contrast they also have various problems and inconsistencies in different applications. So I ended up modifying Breeze-gtk theme to make better contrast for selected text.

Comment 4 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:11:11 UTC

Created attachment 120068 [details]
screenshot of Dolphin with Breeze theme

Comment 5 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:11:59 UTC

Created attachment 120069 [details]
screenshot of Dolphin with April theme

Comment 6 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:14:03 UTC

Created attachment 120070 [details]
screenshot of Firefox with original Breeze theme

Comment 7 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:15:06 UTC

Created attachment 120071 [details]
screenshot of Firefox with modified Breeze theme

Comment 8 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:17:33 UTC

Created attachment 120072 [details]
screenshot of Thunderbird with original Breeze theme

Comment 9 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:18:35 UTC

Created attachment 120073 [details]
screenshot of Thunderbird with modified Breeze theme

Comment 10 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:24:59 UTC

Created attachment 120074 [details]
modified Breeze theme for gtk-2.0

Comment 11 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:26:47 UTC

Created attachment 120075 [details]
modified Breeze theme for gtk-3.20

Comment 12 Alexander 2019-05-15 00:31:31 UTC

I added a few screenshots to clarify which changes I needed to be able to work somehow.
I also added modified Breeze theme for gtk which I use.

Comment 13 Filip Fila 2019-07-09 13:14:14 UTC

We're trying to solve this by changing the highlight effect to be like in e.g. Kickoff. That would solve most of the issues, although text selection in a textual file would probably still use the same effect.

BTW current contrast really is poor so I am going to confirm this report.

Comment 14 Alexander 2019-09-23 14:17:22 UTC

I checked neon-testing-20190920-1334 with Plasma 5.16.90 after I read that "The Breeze GTK theme now respects your chosen color scheme".
I didn't test it for a long period but at first glance it completely solves my problem.
Now I can download April theme for Plasma, change a couple of params there and it will affect GTK apps too (at least Firefox was being affected).
It's a huge improvement for me - now I don't need to manually edit large GTK theme file.

Unfortunately Plasma 5.16.90 also has extremely reduced settings for my touchpad (Wayland?) which render it useless, so I'm not quite sure whether I'll be able to enjoy this new behavior of GTK Breeze theme or not :)

Comment 15 Nate Graham 2020-06-11 03:34:06 UTC

*** Bug 422527 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16 Karl Ove Hufthammer 2021-09-16 20:08:36 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #15)
> *** Bug 422527 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

But 422527 was marked as a duplicate of this bug, but note that that bug is about the contrast for ‘positive’ and ‘neutral’ selected text, not normal selected text, which this bug is about.

For me, normal selected text (white on blue background) has enough contrast, but I can see that the contrast is a probably a bit low for people with poorer eyesight. But the contrast for ‘positive’ and ‘neutral’ text is almost *non-existent*: https://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=129102

I’ll copy my comments from the other bug report:

SUMMARY
The lack of contrast for the default Breeze selection text colours for the ‘positive’ and ‘neutral’ styles with coloured backgrounds makes the text extremely hard to read. This is also true, to a lesser extent, for the ‘negative’ and ‘visited’ style with a coloured background and for the ‘positive’ style for a normal (selection) background.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open System Settings.
2. Go to ‘Colors’.
3. Select ’Breeze’.
4. Click the hard-to-spot pencil button on the ‘Breeze’ preview.
5. Select the ‘Colors’ tab.
6. Change ‘Color set’ to ‘Selection’.

OBSERVED RESULT
See screenshot at https://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=129102. For the second row of colour previews, the ‘positive’ and ‘neutral’ text is very hard to read. The ‘negative’ and ‘visited’ text is also hard to read. For the first row, the ‘positive’ text is hard to read.

EXPECTED RESULT
All text should have sufficient contrast to be easily readable.

Comment 17 Nate Graham 2021-09-17 18:43:35 UTC

Link text contrast issues are tracked at Bug 419960; let's use this for positive and negative text contract issues.

Comment 18 Bug Janitor Service 2021-09-17 20:15:51 UTC

A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/139

Comment 19 Nate Graham 2021-09-20 20:01:20 UTC

Git commit a348854c91111524220d278ef6a72a8d31cdffc5 by Nate Graham.
Committed on 20/09/2021 at 20:01.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'.

Darken hard-to-read positive, negative, and neutral selection colors

These colors were previously using the same values as in other contexts,
but this was not appropriate for the Selection set, because contrast and
readability were low. This commit addresses that by making the colors
darker just for the Selection color set. Now they are much more
readable.

This change is made to all four of the Breeze* color schemes, as they
all suffered from the issue.
FIXED-IN: 5.23

M  +3    -3    colors/Breeze.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeDark.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeHighContrast.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeLight.colors

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/commit/a348854c91111524220d278ef6a72a8d31cdffc5

Comment 20 Nate Graham 2021-09-20 20:01:54 UTC

Git commit 792023a34a874f8998c944d691e55951b821bd0d by Nate Graham.
Committed on 20/09/2021 at 20:01.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/5.23'.

Darken hard-to-read positive, negative, and neutral selection colors

These colors were previously using the same values as in other contexts,
but this was not appropriate for the Selection set, because contrast and
readability were low. This commit addresses that by making the colors
darker just for the Selection color set. Now they are much more
readable.

This change is made to all four of the Breeze* color schemes, as they
all suffered from the issue.
FIXED-IN: 5.23


(cherry picked from commit a348854c91111524220d278ef6a72a8d31cdffc5)

M  +3    -3    colors/Breeze.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeDark.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeHighContrast.colors
M  +3    -3    colors/BreezeLight.colors

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/commit/792023a34a874f8998c944d691e55951b821bd0d