Re: Negativ Layout in Gnome 3

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanied gnome org>]

Hey Shaun.

> What's the story with respect to inverse/contrast done by the
> magnifier, and the high-contrast (-inverse) themes? Our help
> is task-focused, so its starts with things like "Increase the
> visual contrast". I'd like to make sure we're directing users
> to the right technologies.

The short answer is: I think you are -- given what technologies are
currently available in GNOME 3. The longer answer is....

The themes accomplish the following:
* Change the widget color
* For those apps and toolkits that respect that setting
* To a specific, pre-defined alternative

Things the themes hardly touch -- if at all:
* Web documents (non-widgets)
* OpenOffice/LibreOffice
* Images

Things the themes actually can make worse:
* Apps that don't fully respect themes (i.e. if they force the text
  color but not the background, you might wind up with black text on
  navy)

Mind you, these themes also don't touch gnome-shell. But this is a known
issue. Once that issue is addressed, however, it's not going to solve
the issues I listed above.

In addition: You don't really have any (easy) control over what those
things get changed to. For instance, I personally need a high contrast
inverse solution due to being extremely photophobic. White text on black
with everything else having normal colors works best for me (in fact,
one of the things I dig about gnome-shell is that the color scheme I
need is default for what might be the first time EVER in my
computer-using life. Yay!) But in terms of the themes, white on blue
with other colors losing their original/normal appearance doesn't work
all that well for me. In some respects it makes things harder. So now I
wear my sunglasses to use GNOME 3. But I digress....

Getting back to your original question, what the magnifier inverse is
going to provide is inverted brightness:

* Black becomes white
* White becomes black
* Dark blue becomes light blue
* Light blue becomes dark blue
* etc.

And in that regard, it's going to be far more awesome than what Compiz
provides (inverse color) in which:

* Black becomes white
* White becomes black
* Dark blue becomes orangey
* Light blue becomes something approaching puke-colored
* etc.

In addition, the magnifier inverse doesn't care about what it is
inverting. It just happily inverts. :-) And thus it will address the
issues I outlined above about themes: Web pages, OpenOffice/LibreOffice,
apps that don't respect themes? No problem! That's why I really think we
need this and sooner rather than later.

One thing it still won't give us, to my knowledge, is the ability to do
it on a per-window basis -- which would be highly desirable for web
pages that are already inverse contrast, photo editing, etc. The Compiz
negative plugin provides that. But in the spirit of first thing being
first, I'd like to get an option in place and then have users file RFEs
for additional and unique needs. 

So... Like I said above, in terms of the help, you're directing users to
what options exist at the moment. That's all you can do. But once we
finally get Joseph's work incorporated into GNOME Shell -- and possibly
see a corresponding change in the Universal Access settings dialog (??)
-- then some additional documentation would be quite helpful. And
hopefully the above explanation will be of some value regarding the
anticipated functionality.

Take care.
--joanie