Author Topic: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues  (Read 5462 times)

Offline Smitty

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Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« on: May 18, 2021, 01:26:22 pm »
I will post a image later, but, I wanted to start the discussion about this anyway.

At some stage a rather significant upgrade to CodeBlocks has intruduced what I am guessing is an updated UI-toolkit and color scheme.  The tabs have a kind of silvery color which fades to black, with text in a color and size which I cannot read (or change).

This is caused me no end of trouble in trying to get configured so that I can actually read the text on the tabs, or other places (message panel, under some circumstances, etc)

I have looked extensively through the forums and googled and cannot find a way to adjust this stuff.

Like I said, I will post an image later, along with my environment details.
(Fedora 34 Linux / Cinnamon Desktop)  which may be partly to blame.

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2021, 02:17:33 pm »
Most probably your version of wxGTK is using GTK3 and this is the result.
You can verify that in the help->about->information window.
If it is not GTK3 please post the info and possibly a screenshot.
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Offline Smitty

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2021, 10:12:20 am »
Unfortunately, due to some very strange behavior of this forum, I am *only* able to log in from a single host, so I cannot (easily) provide an image.

Why is my forum login restricted to a single computer ?  Who thinks that's a good idea ?

Offline Miguel Gimenez

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2021, 10:27:34 am »
Probably you hit this with your other computer.

Offline Smitty

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2021, 02:34:07 pm »
Indeed.  I live in Germany, and have the same DS-Lite provision.

So, anyway, I guess I am using GTK3 , so what's the solution.

I've fiddled about with the "Theme" and other setting, but frankly this kind of stuff bores the tears out of me. 

I honestly can't be arsed to mess about trying to 'customize' an otherwise totally usable interface (Cinnamon on my PC) that other people have already spent amazing amounts of time on with excellent results.  The question really is, why do the colors and fonts on this application look so different from the desktop theme ?   
What do I do about it ?  What are my options ?
« Last Edit: May 19, 2021, 02:43:11 pm by Smitty »

Offline sodev

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2021, 02:57:09 pm »
Where did you get that updated CodeBlocks from? Your scarce description sounds like this CodeBlocks is linked against wxWidgets 3.0.x and you are using a dark desktop theme. wxWidgets 3.1.x (not sure how big x needs to be) has lots of improvements for dark themes, using such a recent version should fix the described problems.

Offline Smitty

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2021, 03:46:51 pm »
Actually, I'm not 100% sure, I will need to check when I get home - at some stage a while back I was running a home-built version becuase the Fedora repo was so far behind.

But, I'm pretty sure I am now running the Fedora F34 Mainline version.

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #7 on: May 19, 2021, 09:15:07 pm »
The info page in the about dialog has this info and we don't need to guess.
The major problem is that the wxAUI stuff we use doesn't work too well on GTK3.
For GTK2 we had a notebook (the edtior tab control) decorator/art which looked sort of good.
Unfortunately GTK people  love to break these things and this needs to be done from scratch for GTK3 and probably soon for GTK4.
Until then it will look bad with some themes...
It seems more and more distros are dropping GTK2, so I suppose we'll be forced to do this porting work soon.
(most of the time I ignore long posts)
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Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2021, 09:37:07 pm »
Can we see at least an image with problem? There is too much guessing...
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Offline Smitty

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2021, 09:17:35 am »
Here's the info.  I checked to be sure I wasn't running my own build - this is from the Fedora F34 Release repository.  Attachment image.
This is after I have spent at least 30 minutes playing with some settings trying to get a readable UI.  The Introduction, or Home screen - or whatever it is called - was very dark blue text on black background, and so was totally unreadable.  The default font has been changed to "Source Code Pro" and font sizes increased to 11 (or possibly 12) .  I'm pretty sure I have adjusted a few other things, but I can't remember. 

Anyway, you can see that the text on the non-selected tabs is virtually unreadable.  I haven't managed to make this any better.

Name             : Code::Blocks
Version          : 20.03-r11997
SDK Version      : 2.0.0
Scintilla Version: 3.7.5
Author           : The Code::Blocks Team
E-mail           : info@codeblocks.org
Website          : http://www.codeblocks.org

wxWidgets Library (wxGTK port)
Version 3.0.5 (Unicode: wchar_t, debug level: 1),
compiled at May  6 2021 00:00:00

Runtime version of toolkit used is 3.24.
Compile-time GTK+ version is 3.24.29.


« Last Edit: May 20, 2021, 09:22:19 am by Smitty »

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Unreadable tab-text and other color issues
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2021, 11:01:47 am »
Settings -> Environment -> Notebook appearance -> Tab style has some options. Have you tried any of the non-defaults? Probably they all look bad, I don't remember.
(most of the time I ignore long posts)
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