[Gambas-user] Color

[B Bruen]

I am working on a project where the colors used on the forms need to be adjusted for different ambient light situations, "low light" and "daylight".  (The application is used outdoors at dawn and during the day. So at dawn we need to have a fairly dull and low contrast set of colors so the user does not have to adjust their vision between a very "bright" screen and the low light view of the racehorse in training. Alternatively, during the day we need a higher contrast set of colors so the screen is readable.)

Up to now we have used two copies of the application to achieve the desired result. So I want instead to use gb.settings to hold the two color sets and load the selected set from a toggle button on the main form. I have overridden the Color class to make the gb.qt4 color names (e.g. SelectedBackground) read/write.  This seems to work perfectly, but I have the following problems:

1) I'd like to define some new color names (e.g. DarkBackground) as there is just not enough standard color names to do all I need. This is not a problem with the Color override as I can define as many different names as I like. My problem is the IDE.  It wont let me type a color name in the Background field on the properties panel, the only way to set a color name is via the button and the "Select a Color" popup which, of course, has never heard of my "DarkBackground" color.  So, is the textbox part of the Background property control really read only or have I done something silly to our local version of the IDE?

2) I can't work out how the background/foreground colors are set when they are "default". Any clues?

3) Is there some way to change the highlight color used for the selected row in list type controls, e.g. a gridview.  The standard dark color is close to our lowlight background, so the selected row is impossible to discern. Id like to use a lighter version of the selected highlight.  In fact it would be nice to change the entire style of the selected row, e.g. bold,+1 font but I don't think that is possible.

4) Some controls, e.g. DirChooser, don't set the background color according to the Background property. It seems to set the background color of the bar at the top of the chooser.  Is there any reason for this?

tia
Bruce

-- 
B Bruen <bbruen at ...2308...>