:shame:Help please;
Hopefully this will be simple, I need to change the color of the text for my Icons on the desktop.
But I cant seem to find the function that does that. I`v looked at all the settable items in the
“Personal Setting” applet for KDE, but the one that changes the text color for the Icons on the
desktop is either vary elusive or I just don’t know which one it is.
Thanks in advance for your assistance. J.B.G.
On 2014-05-05 14:46, jamesbg wrote:
>
> :shame:Help please;
> Hopefully this will be simple, I need to change the color of the text
> for my Icons on the desktop.
> But I cant seem to find the function that does that. I`v looked at all
> the settable items in the
> “Personal Setting” applet for KDE, but the one that changes the text
> color for the Icons on the
> desktop is either vary elusive or I just don’t know which one it is.
>
> Thanks in advance for your assistance. J.B.G.
Welcome, but… Did you not read the BIG notice on top of this page?
+++················
This forum is NOT for asking questions, but contains submissions to be
reviewed and potentially moved to the How To/FAQ area. If you see
something here you
················+++
And the BIG photo on the top left:
“Please don’t ask product questions here.”
So, please be nice and ask a moderator to move your thread to the
applications forum.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
This is CLOSED and will be moved to Applications.
Moved from Unreviewed Howto and FAQ and open again.
And which KDE version is this about?
Neither KDE3 nor KDE4 have a “Personal Setting” applet.
If it is KDE4 it depends on which icons you mean exactly.
If you want to change the text color for the icons of your folderview widget (that’s what’s displaying the contents of your ~/Desktop folder), just right-click on an empty space and select “Folderview Settings”.
In “Icons” you find a setting for the text color as well.
The text color of other plasmoids is determined by the theme mostly, so you would have to select a different one.
Please post a screenshot of the icons you mean, if in doubt.
Response to wolfi323
Changing the folder view colors went well.
But the other plasmoids such as the ones you can add to the desktop
from the launcher menu are the ones I really want to change so that
my background image doesn’t obscure them.
And I apologize for the incorrect reference, the object I`m
referring to is in the application launcher under “Favorites”
listed as “Configure Desktop”. This appears in all the user
accounts on the machine.
And if it is a theme issue, is there any way to just change
the text colors of the theme?
I suspect that I have KDE version 4.6.
Yast package search says:
kdebase4-runtime 4.6.0-4.9.1.
kdebase4 4.6.0-6.10.1
Im running SuSE 11.4. And Im not sure how to take a screen shot, the best I
can do at this time is try a text description of the
problem. Vary new to Linux, used to use windows until
I got tired of being hacked and publicized.
BTW I apologize to the SYS ADMINS for the initial incorrect
posting of this thread, I just did not know the type of
issue this was.
Thanks J.B.G.
As I said, those depend on the desktop theme.
It’s been a while since I last used KDE 4.6 (nearly 3 years), so I’m not sure what exactly changed since then and what stayed the same, but I’ll try.
You can change the desktop theme in KDE’s “Systemsettings” (might be called “Configure Desktop”)->“Workspace Appearance”->“Desktop Theme”.
If you don’t want to change the complete theme, under “Details” you should even be able to just change the theme for specific parts (Kickoff f.e.), or just the color scheme (this is what you would be looking for I suppose).
On KDE 4.13 I can even choose a file there, if you want to create your own color scheme, have a look at the “colors” file of one of the existing themes in /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/. No idea though if there’s a better way to create such a file than by hand in a text editor.
This applies to all plasmoids of course, even the ones on your panel. You cannot change that for single plasmoids, although certain ones might allow to change the text color (like the notes plasmoid f.e.).
Btw, you can create application launchers in a folder view as well, just drag an entry out of the K-Menu and drop it on the folder view in question (you can have more than one, each pointing to different folders). 
And I`m not sure how to take a screen shot,
Just press the “PrtScr” key on your keyboard, and the screenshot tool should appear. Or run “ksnapshot” manually, from the K-Menu or by typing its name into the Alt+F2 run dialog or a terminal window.
You cannot directly attach pictures here though, you have to upload them to some pics sharing site like http://susepaste.org and post a link.
Response to wolfi323
Ok Iv pasted a screen shot. And as you can see, there are some Icons that are almost obscured by the background image. Ill try your suggestions and then post the results.
Btw is there any way that the forum IT guys could add a string
search to the forum and not just a tag search.
Searching by single words yields too many results.
Im guessing that Im not the first newbie to have this kind
of question.
Thanks J.B.G.
No, I cannot see anything.
You forgot to post the link to the paste…
Ok then try this “http://susepaste.org/39053965”.
Hopefully I`v done everything correctly.
Thanks J.B.G.
Yes.
So you mean the “Personal Settings”, “KRecord”, and “GIMP” icons on the desktop?
Those should take the text color from the plasma theme as already mentioned.
And the entries in your panel as well, like the taskbar and the clock (although you can override the clock’s text color in its settings, right-click on it to reach them).
And as I already wrote as well, you could just drag those three icons out of the K-Menu to the folderview (and remove them from the desktop), they would then look the same like the other icons there.
Well at least now you have a better idea of what i`m trying to do.
Under “System settings->Window decorations” the default is “Oxygen”
and “System settings->Desktop theme” is “Air openSUSE”.
Also the “details” are set for that theme, I tweaked all of the
available variables and the Icon text still did not change from black.
Well I`v looked into the following locations and found all kinds of config
files:
(1) /root/.kde4/share/apps/desktoptheme/.customized1/
This is the one I activated for the variable search.
(2) /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/
I found the files named “colors” and in them there are tags like:
[Colors:Button]
[Colors:Selection]
[Colors:Tooltip]
[Colors:View]
[Colors:Window] (I found these two lines.)
BackgroundNormal=255,255,255
ForegroundNormal=20,19,18 (Tweaking this yields no result.)
[General]
[KDE]
[WM]
And sense the the text color is black I know I`m looking for an
RGB value of (0,0,0), or at least something below (32,32,32).
I tried tweaking some of the RGB values in other categories but they
seem to have no effect. Also is there a way to get KDE to reload it`s
config files from a signal or is it required to log-out then back in
to see any changes in the configuration files?
Yes I know I could just drag the Icons to the folder view, but sense
these are low usage applications I`d rather just leave them on the
desktop. But thanks for the suggestion.
Do you know of any place I might be able to find information about
the makeup of these files?
Thanks J.B.G.
Should be on the KDE web page. If you can’t find a published answer try the KDE mailing lists
The color scheme definitely affects those icons.
Try to set it to “openSUSE” f.e. and you should have a bright text.
Well I`v looked into the following locations and found all kinds of config
files:
(1) /root/.kde4/share/apps/desktoptheme/.customized1/
Are you logged in as root?
That is not really recommended…
I tried tweaking some of the RGB values in other categories but they
seem to have no effect. Also is there a way to get KDE to reload it`s
config files from a signal or is it required to log-out then back in
to see any changes in the configuration files?
You can just quit and restart plasma-desktop.
And this should make plasma reread the configuration as well:
qdbus org.kde.plasma-desktop /MainApplication reparseConfiguration
(or click on the method MainApplication/org.kde.plasma-desktop/reparseConfiguration in qdbusviewer.
But if you use KDE’s settings application to change it, plasma should be notified automatically of the change.
Do you know of any place I might be able to find information about
the makeup of these files?
I will try to find out how exactly you could change the text foreground color.
Found it, it’s indeed “ForegroundNormal” in the “[Colors:Window]” section.
But that qdbus line I gave you does not help. You have to quit and restart plasma-desktop (or logout/login, or reboot) for the change to take effect.
Or using the “Configure Desktop” module to point plasma to your custom file (as mentioned earlier) would show the change immediately as well.
So I guess the best way is to copy the existing “colors” file from any theme to somewhere in your home directory, edit it accordingly, and set it in “Configure Desktop” (“File…” is the last entry in the chooser).
On 2014-05-08 12:46, jamesbg wrote:
> Btw is there any way that the forum IT guys could add a string
> search to the forum and not just a tag search.
There is a forum suggestion area
But I think they will tell you that they can’t, as it is up to the
developers of the forum software itself. I know that people use google
instead, which you can point to search on a specific site.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))
Response to
robin_listas
{
There is a forum suggestion area
But I think they will tell you that they can't, as it is up to the
developers of the forum software itself. I know that people use google
instead, which you can point to search on a specific site.
}
Thanks I pretty much figured this was true but it never hurts to ask.
Response to
gogalthorp
{
Should be on the KDE web page. If you can’t find a published answer try the KDE mailing lists
}
Yes I went and had a look at the KDE.ORG web site and found a reference to some of the files
in question, but its like looking for a needle in a hey stack. It seems that KDE changes so fast that the documentation just doesn't keep up. Maybe they could produce an E-book, (That's what Iv really been looking for.) but I guess it would be out of date as soon as
it was finished.
Response to
wolfi323
{
Are you logged in as root?
That is not really recommended…
}
Yes I know, but I`v tried changing the files in the home directories but they seemed to have
no effect. And yes I agree that root is reserved for system wide changes but when I would
try to change colors in one of the other user accounts, it had no effect, either that or
I was moding the wrong “colors” file.
Well I did find this:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Theme#Theme_Storage
I guess I will build my own theme. Or figure out what variables
are used to effect the changes I want.
The file I made the changes to is located at:
/usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/openSUSEdefault/ “DANGEROUS” As it is system wide.
This changed the colors for all the user accounts that exist
on the machine unfortunately.
I have found that these two variables under the “Colors:Window”
tag work together:
[Colors:Window]
ForegroundNegative=64,88,64 (Default value [191,3,3]).
ForegroundNormal=250,250,250 (Default value [20,19,18]).
They did change the Icon text on the desktop, but there is a
side-effect that this changes more then the text of the Icons.
Some of the other widgets like CPU monitor looked almost
washed out. I`m sure that there are more tags that need to be
changed, but this seems to be a vary involved process of
trial and error and there are other things that I need to get
done.
So I guess if anyone else wants to try this, be sure to backup
any of the files you plan to change. In my poking around I did
cause the screen to become unreadable.
This is apparently a subject of top interest, as I have noticed it`s been
on the first page of the “applications” forum sense I posted it.
Thanks to all for your responses, J.B.G.
Hm?
I already told you what exactly to change and where/how (ok, I didn’t mention the one for the background color).
You should not edit /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/openSUSEdefault/colors, not because it is system-wide, but because your changes get lost when you install an update.
Create your own copy somewhere, maybe even in your home directory, and pick that file in the settings.
They did change the Icon text on the desktop, but there is a
side-effect that this changes more then the text of the Icons.
Yes of course.
These are the colors of the plasma theme, this applies to all plasmoids/widgets.
But I don’t see a way for changing only the colors for one particular widget (or widget type), as I wrote already.
So I guess if anyone else wants to try this, be sure to backup
any of the files you plan to change. In my poking around I did
cause the screen to become unreadable.
If you specify your own file in the settings like I wrote, you don’t have to backup anything, since you don’t overwrite anything.
If things get unreadable, just switch back to the normal theme colors.