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0001 Color Management in KDE
0002 
0003 Colors are in important part of KDE and are an important tool to make
0004 a good looking desktop. Colors can also be a burden, especially for
0005 people with visual impairments.
0006 
0007 The goal of color management is to take full advantage of colors while
0008 reducing the disadvantages of color use to a minimum.
0009 
0010 Color Schemes
0011 =============
0012 
0013 Color Management is based around the concept of color schemes.
0014 A color scheme defines colors for different elements in the
0015 UI. The most important factor for the readability of a UI is the
0016 contrast between foreground and background colors. Colors in a color
0017 scheme are therefore grouped in pairs which define the foreground and
0018 background color for a UI element. When composing a color scheme care
0019 should be taken to use sufficiently contrasting colors for fore- and
0020 background in the same group. When using colors in applications, care
0021 should be taken never to mix foreground colors from one group with
0022 background colors from another group: they do not necasserily have any
0023 contrast at all which can lead to a completely unreadable UI.
0024 
0025 Color schemes are supported by Qt (see QColorGroup) and can be
0026 configured on a KDE wide basis from the Control Panel. The settings
0027 are stored in the global KDE configuration file under the "General"
0028 setting. The KApplication class takes care that the configured
0029 settings are passed on to Qt. Application developers can just use the
0030 values provided by QColorGroup.
0031 
0032 There are three major color categories:
0033 
0034 General
0035 =======
0036 The colors in this group are used when no particular other group is
0037 relevant.
0038 
0039 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Background, background()
0040 KDE config key: background
0041 Control Center: i18n("Window Background")
0042 Description...: General background color
0043 Example use...: Background of dialogs
0044 
0045 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Foreground, foreground()
0046 KDE config key: foreground
0047 Control Center: i18n("Window Text")
0048 Description...: General foreground color
0049 Example use...: Text in dialogs
0050 
0051 Text Areas
0052 ==========
0053 The colors in this group are used where the user can type text. it is
0054 also used for lists from which the user can choose.
0055 
0056 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Base, base()
0057 KDE config key: windowBackground
0058 Control Center: i18n("Standard background")
0059 Description...: Background color for text areas.
0060 Example use...: Background in a word-processor.
0061 
0062 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Text, text()
0063 KDE config key: windowForeground
0064 Control Center: i18n("Standard text")
0065 Description...: Text color for text areas.
0066 Example use...: Text in a word-processor.
0067 
0068 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Highlight, highlight()
0069 KDE config key: selectBackground
0070 Control Center: i18n("Select background")
0071 Description...: Background color for selected text.
0072 Example use...: In a selection list.
0073 
0074 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::HighlightedText, highlightedText()
0075 KDE config key: selectForeground
0076 Control Center: i18n("Select text")
0077 Description...: Text color for selected text.
0078 Example use...: In a selection list.
0079 
0080 "Base" and "Text" should have high contrast as well as "Highlight" and
0081 "HighlightedText". In addition, "Highlight"/"HighlightedText" and
0082 "Base"/"Text" are supposed to be sufficiently different to get a clear
0083 indication of what is selected and what is not.
0084 
0085 Buttons
0086 =======
0087 The colors used in this category are used for buttons in the broad
0088 sense, including e.g.scrollbars, menubars and
0089 popup-menus.
0090 
0091 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Button, button()
0092 KDE config key: buttonBackground
0093 Control Center: i18n("Button background")
0094 Description...: Background color for buttons.
0095 Example use...: Background color of the OK button in a messagebox.
0096 
0097 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::ButtonText, buttonText()
0098 KDE config key: buttonForeground
0099 Control Center: i18n("Button text")
0100 Description...: Color for text on buttons.
0101 Example use...: Color of the OK text on a button in a messagebox.
0102 
0103 
0104 In addition to the above colors a number of derived colors are
0105 defined.They are all darker of lighter version of "Background".
0106 
0107 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Shadow, shadow()
0108 Description...: Used for shadow effects.(Very dark)
0109 
0110 QColorGroup...: ColorRold::BrightText, brightText()
0111 Description...: Used for text on pushed pushbuttons
0112 
0113 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Light, light()
0114 Description...: Lighter than "Button"
0115 
0116 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Midlight, midlight()
0117 Description...: Between "Button" and "Light"
0118 
0119 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Dark, dark()
0120 Description...: Darker than "Button"
0121 
0122 QColorGroup...: ColorRole::Mid, mid()
0123 Description...: Between "Button" and "Dark"
0124 
0125 Well Behaved Applications
0126 ========================
0127 
0128 Applications should never hardcode colors but always default to the
0129 colors from the users color scheme. This ensures consistency among
0130 applications on the desktop. It also ensures that all applications
0131 are equally readable.
0132 
0133 An application may offer the user an option to change the color of
0134 certain aspects of the application. It should be noted that an
0135 application specific color setting can cause unexpected results when
0136 the user changes its color scheme. The application specific color may
0137 look ugly in combination with other color schemes or the resulting UI
0138 may even become unreadable. Therefore applications specific colors
0139 should be used with care.
0140 
0141