Bug 660556

Summary: A near-perfect solution for the famous gnome desktop icon text color problem
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Yao Ziyuan <yaoziyuan>
Component: gnome-desktopAssignee: Ray Strode [halfline] <rstrode>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 14CC: rstrode
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-08-16 20:24:15 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Flags
Effect on a white wallpaper
none
Effect on a dark wallpaper
none
Effect on a light/dark-mixed wallpaper
none
Effect on another dark wallpaper
none
Effect on another light wallpaper
none
Effect on another wallpaper
none
Effect on another wallpaper
none
Effect on another wallpaper
none
Effect on another light wallpaper
none
Effect on another dark wallpaper
none
Effect on another dark wallpaper
none
Effect on another wallpaper
none
Effect on another dark wallpaper
none
Effect on an ALL BLACK wallpaper
none
Effect on an ALL WHITE wallpaper
none
Effect on a white-to-black vertical gradient
none
Effect on a black-to-white vertical gradient
none
Effect on another wallpaper
none
Effect on another wallpaper
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Effect on another wallpaper none

Description Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:10:21 UTC
This bug report proposes a near-perfect solution to the following famous gnome desktop icon text color problem:

By default, GNOME desktop icon text color is white, which works well with dark wallpapers but awkwardly with light ones.

The solution proposed below guarantees a visually pleasant and highly contrasted icon text appearance, whether the wallpaper is dark or light:

Once a new user account is created, the system automatically creates a gtkrc-2.0 file in the new user's home directory, with the following content:


style "desktop-icon"
{
  NautilusIconContainer::frame_text = 1
  text[NORMAL] = "#000000"
  NautilusIconContainer::normal_alpha = 128
}
class "GtkWidget" style "desktop-icon"


(Testers, run "killall nautilus" to see the effect immediately.)

This will set your desktop icon text color to black, and add a 50%-translucent, rounded box under icon text so that the icon text is always easily visible whether the wallpaper is light or dark.

I recommend Fedora adopt this setting by default.

Comment 1 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:11:57 UTC
Created attachment 465141 [details]
Effect on a white wallpaper

Comment 2 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:13:26 UTC
Created attachment 465142 [details]
Effect on a dark wallpaper

Comment 3 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:16:02 UTC
Created attachment 465143 [details]
Effect on a light/dark-mixed wallpaper

Comment 4 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:17:21 UTC
Created attachment 465144 [details]
Effect on another dark wallpaper

Comment 5 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:18:26 UTC
Created attachment 465145 [details]
Effect on another light wallpaper

Comment 6 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:18:41 UTC
Created attachment 465146 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 7 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:19:11 UTC
Created attachment 465147 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 8 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:19:53 UTC
Created attachment 465148 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 9 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:23:15 UTC
Created attachment 465149 [details]
Effect on another light wallpaper

Comment 10 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:23:36 UTC
Created attachment 465150 [details]
Effect on another dark wallpaper

Comment 11 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:24:12 UTC
Created attachment 465151 [details]
Effect on another dark wallpaper

Comment 12 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:24:43 UTC
Created attachment 465152 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 13 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:24:56 UTC
Created attachment 465153 [details]
Effect on another dark wallpaper

Comment 14 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:25:10 UTC
Created attachment 465154 [details]
Effect on an ALL BLACK wallpaper

Comment 15 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:25:34 UTC
Created attachment 465155 [details]
Effect on an ALL WHITE wallpaper

Comment 16 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:26:12 UTC
Created attachment 465157 [details]
Effect on a white-to-black vertical gradient

Comment 17 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:26:38 UTC
Created attachment 465158 [details]
Effect on a black-to-white vertical gradient

Comment 18 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:28:40 UTC
Created attachment 465159 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 19 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:29:06 UTC
Created attachment 465160 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 20 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:29:59 UTC
Created attachment 465162 [details]
Effect on another wallpaper

Comment 21 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 05:32:27 UTC
Wallpapers in all screenshots (except the ALL BLACK, ALL WHITE, black-to-white gradient, white-to-black gradient ones) courtesy of National Geographic Magazine's website.

Comment 22 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-07 18:04:03 UTC
In a related report (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/643836), they say a patch is already under review for GNOME. If approved, GNOME will use the same way as Windows/KDE does to draw desktop icon text (screenshot: http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=166875).

Comment 23 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-11 07:34:16 UTC
Update: In the above gtkrc-2.0 file, reducing NautilusIconContainer::normal_alpha from 128 to 96 can improve appearance with dark wallpapers.

Comment 24 Yao Ziyuan 2010-12-11 07:39:30 UTC
This downplays the translucent text background's illumination, making them less outstanding on a dark wallpaper while still reflective of their text.

Comment 25 Fedora End Of Life 2012-08-16 20:24:17 UTC
This message is a notice that Fedora 14 is now at end of life. Fedora 
has stopped maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 14. It is 
Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no 
longer maintained.  At this time, all open bugs with a Fedora 'version'
of '14' have been closed as WONTFIX.

(Please note: Our normal process is to give advanced warning of this 
occurring, but we forgot to do that. A thousand apologies.)

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