Mint-Y Accent colors should be made darker for dark themes and subdued lighting environments
SebastJava opened this issue · 5 comments
First of all, i feel Clément wanted to work on this alone, so i guess i shouldn't insist too much on this and i am currently busy anyway...
I took just a quick look at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/blob/master/constants.py Most of those colors have the same values for light and dark theme variants, i.e. y_hex_colors1 and y_hex_colors2. I hope this is not final. Most of the new y_hex_colors1 looks great, but i think the y_hex_colors2 should be made darker. You need to look at those y_hex_colors2 against your dark themes background: #383838. And, maybe, try it with a dimmed room lighting too! You will probably find those colors too "flashy" when experienced in dark themes and subdued lighting conditions...
And, as if this was not complicated enough, i have been told there is no simple rule for the dark variants. And i find this sounds true. You can't just do a simple "darken 10%" on all y_hex_colors1 to get the y_hex_colors2. Sometimes, i even go against the rules by increasing the saturation level on some color, after lowering the lightness by a big amount. But that is just an edge case, to say each color should be modified individually, for the dark variants.
Examples:
y_hex_colors1 = {} # BASE
y_hex_colors2 = {} # DARK
y_hex_colors1["Aqua"] = #1f9ede
y_hex_colors2["Aqua"] = #007fbe
y_hex_colors1["Blue"] = #0c75de
y_hex_colors2["Blue"] = #0b6bcb
y_hex_colors1["Orange"] = #ff661a
y_hex_colors2["Orange"] = #d84800
I am not sure. This is subjective.
I just fear some bad reactions from those who prefer to live in dark environments...
Otherwise it is all thumbs up, just much better.
I forgot to mention these dark color variants were not totally improvised. I had some method. I adjusted these y_hex_colors2 using this https://colorable.jxnblk.com/
I estimated the color contrast against the dark background should not exceed 3.0. My reference background is #303030 here.
So, i had some method to ensure those colors do not stand out too much from my #303030 dark background. But to get there, the lightness and saturation levels were re-adjusted in different ways from one color to another, as said before.
I agree with SebastJava's point that the new accent colours glare a bit when one is using a dark theme.
However, I discover that the new accent colours slightly improve the readability of text when using dark themes. For, compare the following, which shows the Mint-Y-Dark-Teal theme,
with this, showing Mint-Y-Legacy-Dark-Teal:
How then, when using dark themes, to have readability without glare? Here are some possibilities.
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Perhaps when text is highlighted, it ought to change its foreground colour.
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Perhaps one needs to find the exact right accent shade and pair it with the right foreground text colour and with the right background text colour. GitHub itself does a great job on that front. For, look at this (though I have had to scale it, which makes it look worse):
There there is no glare, but, also, no sacrifice in readability.
Sorry if I miss something, but are we to take it that some commits have fixed this issue (and indeed that the same goes for #354)?
@LinuxOnTheDesktop No, You did not miss anything. You are right, nothing got fixed. Sorry but... I just got tired of waiting. :)