Bug 433126 - Inactive title bar elements in Breeze Light have the same color as active title bar elements
Summary: Inactive title bar elements in Breeze Light have the same color as active tit...
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 433059
Alias: None
Product: Breeze
Classification: Plasma
Component: window decoration (show other bugs)
Version: 5.21.0
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: VHI normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: regression
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-02-17 22:32 UTC by Yannick
Modified: 2021-03-24 21:49 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Breeze Light (active window on the left, inactive on the right) (36.51 KB, image/png)
2021-02-17 22:32 UTC, Yannick
Details
"Classic" Breeze theme (active window on the left, inactive on the right) (31.33 KB, image/png)
2021-02-17 22:34 UTC, Yannick
Details
inactive CSD (44.34 KB, image/png)
2021-02-20 11:39 UTC, Yannick
Details

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Description Yannick 2021-02-17 22:32:32 UTC
Created attachment 135800 [details]
Breeze Light (active window on the left, inactive on the right)

SUMMARY

With the new Breeze Light theme, it's a bit hard to distinguish active window decorations from inactive ones, as the title bar text seems to keep the same color on both active and inactive windows.

I edited the Breeze Light color scheme and changed the "inactive title bar text" color to a lighter one, but it didn't have any effect.

With the "classic" Breeze theme (dark title bars) everything works as expected.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
OS: Archlinux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.79.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Comment 1 Yannick 2021-02-17 22:34:17 UTC
Created attachment 135801 [details]
"Classic" Breeze theme (active window on the left, inactive on the right)

For reference, the same screenshot with the "classic" Breeze theme.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2021-02-17 23:24:19 UTC
I think this may have been intentional, but even if that was the case, it should be changed back to what it was before, because we already have people complaining about inactive windows being harder to distinguish than they were before.

I suspect this is caused by titlebar colors being ignored while header colors are in use.

Noah or Jan, could you take a look?
Comment 3 Yannick 2021-02-20 11:39:52 UTC
Created attachment 135961 [details]
inactive CSD

Inactive CSD elements, on the other hand, behave "as before" since they have a lighter shade of grey than active decorations.
Side-by-side comparison with inactive Kate and Simple-scan windows on the attached picture.
Comment 4 Noah Davis 2021-02-20 11:46:23 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #2)
> I think this may have been intentional, but even if that was the case, it
> should be changed back to what it was before, because we already have people
> complaining about inactive windows being harder to distinguish than they
> were before.
> 
> I suspect this is caused by titlebar colors being ignored while header
> colors are in use.
> 
> Noah or Jan, could you take a look?

Nope, not intentional.
Comment 5 Vladislav Rubtsov 2021-03-02 14:26:11 UTC
The bug is most likely related to the color blending effects, which cannot be edited by KColorSchemeEditor at this point.

By closely inspecting color theme files, I found out that "Breeze Light" now uses the following settings not found in certain other themes:

[WM]
activeBlend=227,229,231
inactiveBlend=239,240,241

This is most likely responsible for incorrect coloring of the active title bar, when user changes the color to non-default one.

I've been trying to manually edit Breeze Light color scheme, by saving a copy of it then altering its file in '~/.kde/share/apps/color-schemes/', but to no avail. It looks like KDE stores user-defined settings elsewhere and this is just a dump/cache of it.

Any insight of how to properly edit KDE system settings by hand would be highly appreciated. 
It bugs me how KDE internals are not documented at all, nor they are easy to work with, since something as simple as manually editing one line of a color theme has no apparent workaround.
Comment 6 Noah Davis 2021-03-02 18:23:22 UTC
(In reply to Vladislav Rubtsov from comment #5)
> The bug is most likely related to the color blending effects, which cannot
> be edited by KColorSchemeEditor at this point.
> 
> By closely inspecting color theme files, I found out that "Breeze Light" now
> uses the following settings not found in certain other themes:
> 
> [WM]
> activeBlend=227,229,231
> inactiveBlend=239,240,241
> 
> This is most likely responsible for incorrect coloring of the active title
> bar, when user changes the color to non-default one.
> 
> I've been trying to manually edit Breeze Light color scheme, by saving a
> copy of it then altering its file in '~/.kde/share/apps/color-schemes/', but
> to no avail. It looks like KDE stores user-defined settings elsewhere and
> this is just a dump/cache of it.
> 
> Any insight of how to properly edit KDE system settings by hand would be
> highly appreciated. 
> It bugs me how KDE internals are not documented at all, nor they are easy to
> work with, since something as simple as manually editing one line of a color
> theme has no apparent workaround.

activeBlend and inactiveBlend aren't actually used by Breeze. I'm pretty sure they're a leftover from the days when KDE's titlebars had horizontal gradients like Windows 98. I'm not sure if anything actually uses them anymore, but they don't hurt and so they were never removed.

Color schemes are kept in the standard XDG locations for shared resources. ~/.kde only exists for KDE4 compatibility and should be ignored.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2021-03-24 21:49:28 UTC
Actually this is Bug 433059.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 433059 ***