[NB] Ummm... Everything Is Now Pink

[RussWhaley]

Not sure what's up with this. I installed the latest beta via the update routine within the previous beta. All seemingly went well, no glitches or other problems.

I started the new beta to find much of the UI had gone.... pink. I'm not against pink, you understand, but this was a bit of a shock, since I had been using a muted earth tones mix I'd come up with.

Is this a new color scheme, or did something go awry?

Screenshot included. Thanks for taking a look.

Pink!.PNG (84.53 KiB) Viewed 4937 times

[shaun]

I don't see any pink. Is it your monitor/screen?

[rwfranz]

I don't see any pink. Is it your monitor/screen?

Heh. I see what he's talking about. It's not really pink, but that screenshot does seem to have a pink cast to it (not exactly sure what those colors are called, tbh). I change the colors from the default, and also muck with the Windows themes to make Scrivener look right for my purposes.

Some of the colors cannot be mucked with in Scrivener, so they have to be changed in Windows.

It'd be nice to know what Windows elements are being used in the different areas of the UI.

[RussWhaley]

Resolved: Resetting my Windows 10 color scheme followed by a reboot restored Scrivener to the primarily white-hued UI I've been accustomed to seeing after first install.

A few observations for the record -

In the past, I've first uninstalled one beta and then installed the next. This time I decided to try the updater within Scrivener instead to see what happened.

This is the first time any sort of color disruption in the UI has ever presented itself, so perhaps there is a part of the process in the updating routines that alters or overwrites a style sheet or similar, which causes Windows to interpret the color-setting commands differently.


I second the motion from rwfranz, it would be great to have a little insight into what's being manipulated for those of us who like to go whole-hog with custom colors.

Thanks for looking, guys. And gals.

[tiho_d]

Hi Guys, the Scrivener full and update installers do not deal with the Windows color scheme. There is no explanation why you experienced this issue after the update.

It is not easy to tell what and where to modify to achieve a special Scrivener color. Scrivener uses a lot of custom controls, This combined with Qt under the hood makes it difficult to predict which Windows color change will get reflected in Scrivener. The most reliable way is using the Scrivener Appearance settings, which are quite limited. We plan a dark color scheme for years, and even had some good working templates, but they never made it into production due to limited time and not stable behavior. So at the moment we cannot help you much here guys. It is a bit of a trial and error. Have in mind that Qt i.e. Scrivener also supports stylesheets on the command line, but it might also have crazy side effects on the Scrivener GUI.

[rwfranz]

Have in mind that Qt i.e. Scrivener also supports stylesheets on the command line, but it might also have crazy side effects on the Scrivener GUI.

So, for those who're not sure how, and want to play with it:

Find a likely stylesheet. Warning, it probably won't behave the way you expect. I downloaded darkorange.stylesheet, and copied it to the Scrivener directory. Many QT stylesheets are available on the "Interwebs."

Open a command prompt, navigate to the Scrivener directory.

Enter a line like this (substituting your own stylesheet name, of course):

Code: Select all

Scrivener.exe -stylesheet=darkorange.stylesheet

What I got was nothing like I expected. However, it shows a way to customize Scrivener's colors without relying on Windows styles and themes to adjust them (which is rather like using a sledgehammer to squash a cockroach. It does the job, but what else does it do?).

When you use a stylesheet in this way, some of the colors normally changeable in Scrivener via [Options > Appearance > Colors] are no longer changeable (I'm not certain any of them are, actually).

As tiho_d said, "Crazy effects on the GUI."

However, stylesheets are editable, and this can be used to muck with the default colors in Scrivener.

Hmm. Playtime. Need to find out which styles affect which bits.

[shaun]

Where was the pink?

I used a color picker on the image, and the only colors I could find were #ffffff, #f0f0f0, #bcbcbc, #ccc for the scroll bar, and #e1e1e1 for the buttons. Those are all white/greys.

The only pink seems to be the bookmark icon, which is #fe827d, and maybe the lines on the index cards, which are #f09d96, or the background letters (To Do, etc) which are #fcebe7.

Unless I'm missing something, whatever you were seeing wasn't captured in the screenshot you posted.

[rwfranz]

Where was the pink?

I used a color picker on the image, and the only colors I could find were #ffffff, #f0f0f0, #bcbcbc, #ccc for the scroll bar, and #e1e1e1 for the buttons. Those are all white/greys.

Different monitors show grays differently. Also, many people have some degree of color misperception. Red/green colorblindness is fairly common, for example. And any of those could cause those areas to appear as some variant on pink.

[shaun]

But that's not something present in the screenshot, or in Scrivener. If it were his eyes or his monitor, then everything else on his computer should have looked pink as well.

chrome_2018-10-01_00-35-54.png (244.21 KiB) Viewed 4778 times

[RussWhaley]

Basically, all the non-changeable white parts had a noticeable pink hue. It surprised me, because this hadn't happened before and I haven't been messing with monitor color profiles lately. I've done that sometimes when working with Photoshop to get a truer rendition of the image I am working with at the time. But I digress.

The screenshot was taken in MS Edge, and at least on my machine, shows the hue.

FWIW: Windows 10 Home, Release 1803, Build 17134.228. My graphics card is a venerable Nvidia GTX 260 driving an even more venerable (by a couple years) Dell monitor.

After reading your comments, I switched to Chrome for the heck of it, and see what you mean - no pinkness any more.

This is seeming like some sort of intermittent, outlier glitch on my end and not anything to do with Scrivener.

Now, I'm off to really mess things up by playing with those stylesheets that were mentioned....

[rwfranz]

Now, I'm off to really mess things up by playing with those stylesheets that were mentioned....

Here's my current test stylesheet, with some comments in it: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E39Sijd6SQzyEsxG_1odtIsBEXXuB-YY

I'll be updating it as I discover more tweaks. It does not contain everything, I'm sure. also, it does not reflect what I want in an interface (lest anyone make that mistake). I use some of those colors to discover what's going on. #FF00FF is an easy color to spot in the interface, and orange is easier on my eyes. So most of it is orange, while a few things are gray, or magenta, so I could spot them. And the grayish black came with the stylesheet when I downloaded it. You can see how to do gradients, if you'd like those.

The QT documentation on QTWidget and its components has many more possible permutations. How many of them Scriv uses, I don't know. Some I would have expected, and they don't change a thing. Others surprised me.

[RussWhaley]

Had a busy couple weeks and just trying the QT stylesheets today. Do you simply copy the .stylesheet file to the Scrivener top directory and run via cmd, or should the file be placed farther in? Thus far, Scrivener is ignoring the stylesheet and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. There is a Win Vista style DLL in the styles subdir, should the .stylesheet be there?

Cheers - and thanks.

[rwfranz]

Had a busy couple weeks and just trying the QT stylesheets today. Do you simply copy the .stylesheet file to the Scrivener top directory and run via cmd, or should the file be placed farther in? Thus far, Scrivener is ignoring the stylesheet and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. There is a Win Vista style DLL in the styles subdir, should the .stylesheet be there?

I copied the .stylesheet file to the Scrivener top directory, opened a terminal in that directory, and used this command line:

Code: Select all

Scrivener.exe -stylesheet=darkorange.stylesheet

Replace the stylesheet name with whatever you're using. So if you're using C://Downloads/x.qss as your stylesheet, it would be

Code: Select all

Scrivener.exe -stylesheet=C://Downloads/x.qss

Which is why I copied it into the Scrivener top directory; it makes things easier.

[garpu]

Oh wow. Is your stylesheet now bright yellow? (Wondering if things are working properly on my end.)

[rwfranz]

Oh wow. Is your stylesheet now bright yellow? (Wondering if things are working properly on my end.)

It's pretty yellow atm. Somewhat that's because I was identifying which QT objects were used where (easiest way: one obvious color for everything, and then another obvious color for what you're testing). And part of that's because it's easier on my eyes (back in the days of greenscreens, I used amber screens instead).

It started as darkorange.stylesheet (which you can find on the Web in various places). That was too dark.

It still doesn't have checkboxes correct. A lot of figuring out what affects what is reverse engineering by trial and error. You're welcome to build a new one and upload your results.

Roger