[mythtv] Ticket #8309: MythCenter and MythCenter-wide Themes use inappropriate fill colors

[R. G. Newbury]

On 04/06/2010 09:22 PM, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 20:11 -0400, Newbury wrote:
>> Oh I agree. I filed 8306 not realizing that the Droid font had been
>> chosen specifically for the spot it was in.
>
> As noted the Droid font was intentional and I don't plan on changing
> that as I've now tuned a large number of screens for that font.

> As for the colors.. there are some contrast issues and look issues
> with these. My plan right now is to fix all the layout issues first
> and deal with the colors last. My goal is to keep the original
> MythCenter look&  feel, but gain maximal functionality. The plan is
> to backport the functionality parts to the default theme before
> making the more MythCenter specific changes. I can foresee the color
> choices being controversial and argument about it holding up the
> more significant fixes, hence the ordering.

That's a reasonable course of action.
Agreed that color choices are 'artistic'. Maybe the route forward would 
be to prepare some patches which either substitute different files, or 
use a sed script to patch (and un-patch) the xml files.
That would allow users the choice/chance to test different color setups 
within stable theme structures.

A more radical choice but one which might be more useful in the end from 
a stability point of view might be to use ENTITY substitutions for 
colors, defining all colors from a fixed palette, in a default included 
file, something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE theme [
    <!ENTITY colorblack "#000000" >
    <!ENTITY colorwhite "#FFFFFF" >
    <!ENTITY colorcyan  "#00FFFF" >
    <!ENTITY coloryellow "#FFFF33" >
    <!ENTITY colordarkyellow "#DDDD44" >
    <!ENTITY colordarkblue "#003256" >
    <!ENTITY colorgreen  "#00AA00" >
    <!ENTITY colorbrightgreen "#11DD11" >
    <!ENTITY colorred    "#FF0000" >
    <!ENTITY colorgrey   "#888888" >
]>

<mythuitheme>

     <!-- Base Font Definitions -->
     <font name="basesmall" face="Droid Sans">
         <pixelsize>22</pixelsize>
         <color>colorwhite</color>
         <bold>yes</bold>
     </font>

This seems to work within reason. I have noted however that some color 
statements do not 'like' the ENTITY substitution, and the resulting 
'tainted' xml file seems to cause a breakdown of communications with the 
backend ( I get the 'MYTHPROTO version is empty' error. This sounds SO 
weird, but I have caused the problem by messing with theme xml files, 
and fixed it by copying back the original files. I know not enough about 
xml parsing to even begin to figure out what is going on. ( Gradient 
pairings are one suspect in this problem.)

A 256 color palette with RGB and hex values is available at:

http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/colorpicker.htm

As for me, I like white text on a black background, or black text on 
white background!

Geoff







          Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."