Created attachment 158099 [details] Comparison of highlighting styles SUMMARY Konsole currently highlights the active header bar of a split by shadowing the header bars of inactive splits. This makes the active and inactive splits hard to distinguish (depending on lighting conditions, display brightness, etc.). STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Open konsole 2. Open multiple splits 3. Try to find the active split under sub-optimal conditions such as a dimmed notebook screen OBSERVED RESULT Active and inactive splits are hard to distinguish. EXPECTED RESULT The active split is always clearly identifiable, for example by using the highlight color for drawing the background of the active split. Attachment "comparison.png" shows a comparison between the current and the patched version. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.4 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.105.0 Qt Version: 5.105.0
Created attachment 158100 [details] Proof-of-concept patch of the proposed change Please find a small patch based on current master (commit 0dff660f7) attached that demonstrates the proposed behavior. The patch includes an extension to the configuration "Tab Bar / Splitters" dialog and adds a "Header Styling" option to the "Splits" tab. Note: both the wording used in the patched configuration dialog as well as the implementation of the patch itself are probably far from optimal... please feel free to change as required or let me know what to change if this feature can be considered.
Hi! If you want to contribute a patch to Konsole (or any other KDE project), the best way to do it is to create a Merge Request on https://invent.kde.org/utilties/konsole. I agree that the contrast is a bit low, even with the default Breeze theme where shadowing does have some effect. As for your patch, it seems that on my machine it makes all non-active headers black, which is undesirable IMO. In addition, using the accent color is somewhat bright with my color, and it also prevents the 'outlines' around buttons from appearing (because those are the same color). Looking at other KDE software, it looks like they're using a 'dimmed' version of the accent color when you e.g. hover over a selectable item. The color itself is also used in some places, but generally on smaller regions. The tab bar uses a small line of the accent color to highlight the active one. Figuring out such details is probably best left to the VDG.
This issue is resolved. In recent versions of Konsole (tested in 24.02.2), there's a feature to highlight the active terminal via a colored border: Profile settings -> "Appearance" -> "Miscellaneous" -> "Active Terminals" -> "Border"