Rick Miles posted on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:10:15 +1100 as excerpted:
> I'm new to kde4.4 :^)
>
> Wher is the setting for system tray fonts? All my notifications are
> black on black.
>
> Wher is the setting for desktop font colors, i.e. the lettering under
> icons, and also where is the setting for font shadowing for lettering
> under icons. I seem to remember these being in Advanced where wallpaper
> was changed. Wallpaper is is now changed under Desktop Activity Settings
> when I right click on the desktop but there are no settings for fonts
> and shadowed text and degfault seems to be some sort of white shadow
> cloud behind the icon text on my desktop.
The desktop, aka plasma, has its own themes. However, in a couple places,
they seem to interact with the normal kde colors as well. Well either
that or the themes I run don't have a couple things set too well. This
can be bad if like me you have a strong "reverse color scheme" (that is,
light text on a dark background) preference, as that's uncommon and the
assumption would be dark text on a light background.
Unfortunately, unlike kde, where most of the colors are set specifically,
with plasma one has to choose a theme -- altho individual components (,
general color scheme, panel background, desktop widget background, analog
clock, etc) can be set to different themes if desired. Editing individual
elements within a component, however, requires editing the text-based
config files themselves, unfortunately.
To set a default plasma (aka "workspace") theme, see kcontrol (the
application formerly known as, now less accurately and way too generically
known as system settings), look & feel, appearance, style, workspace tab.
You can even download more from kdelook using the button, if you like.
If you wish to mix and match components from different themes, that's
under advanced user settings, desktop theme details. Select the one that
you want to use as your base in the top ribbon, thus setting all the
individual components to it, then change individual components to those of
other themes as desired.
But here, I liked a particular theme ("Professional", downloaded from
kdelook) except for one problem: the lettering on the "cashew" (aka
toolbox) popup was white (good), but surrounded by white shadow as well
(bad), thus making it unreadable (very bad). To fix that I had to edit an
individual entry in the theme color scheme file. But there was a trick to
the entry I had to edit, as plasma was apparently trying to out-smart
itself.
It sounds like you may have similar issues but in different areas. You
have two choices. You can either trial and error with themes until you
find something you like that doesn't have such issues, or, if you're like
me and have a particular favorite, except for those one or two things, you
can try editing them yourself, in effect, creating your own theme color
scheme.
The file I had to edit was in $KDEHOME (~/.kde as shipped by kde, some
distributions make it ~/.kde4 or the like, or you can always set and
export the variable before starting KDE, if you want it elsewhere).
$KDEHOME/share/apps/desktoptheme/<theme>/colors. That's probably the file
you want too, but you may have some work cut out for you figuring out
which line.
Here, I had the one theme I liked, but for the one issue, and another
theme that didn't have the issue. What I did to find the problem was
backup the theme I liked, then switch out the files one by one from the
other theme I didn't like so well, killing and restarting plasma-desktop
each time, until I found the culprit -- the colors file as mentioned
above. Then I restored my backup, and backed up that individual file,
then used the same technique on sections within that file. Once I found
the section, I did the same thing with individual lines of that section.
It turned out that for me, the problem section was [Colors:Window], with
the problem line being ForegroundNormal. Now here's the trick. The color
in that line was NOT the problem color, directly! What plasma was
apparently doing was believing that color to be the text/font color, when
the text/font color was actually something else. But because that color
was set somewhat dark, and the background was also dark, plasma thought
there wasn't enough contrast between the two and was whitening the area
around the text, so it would contrast better with what plasma THOUGHT was
a dark foreground/font/text color -- except that's not the color that was
being used for font/foreground/text at all. The color that was being used
was actually white or close to it, so rather than fix the problem by
whitening the background around the text, plasma was actually CREATING the
problem. See what I said about being a bit too smart for its own good?
Now your problem is probably a different line in that same file. The
white shadow cloud seems to be the same effect I saw, tho, so be aware
that the problem line is likely NOT a white or near-white RGB code
(255,255.255), but rather, something a bit darker, with plasma likely
trying to out-smart itself and failing, in your case as well. You'll
likely need some luck and a lot of patience to find it, at least using the
trial and error method I used, but it'll work if you're sufficiently
patient and determined. If you're not up for that, just try a few more
plasma themes until you find one at least /almost/ right, and leave it at
that.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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