Default Colors of Desktop Applications
 

Hi all, I have a problem with the colors of some application like vlc, idle (python) etc.
https://image.ibb.co/eshdB5/screen.png
As you can see in the topbar/menubar, the color contrast between background and foreground its pretty bad
I have linux arch + i3, do you know how can I fix that?
Greetings

There are a number of skins available for VLC. Some of the them may be more suitable to your tastes. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html

I don't know much about i3 other than what it is, but what terminal emulator are you using? A number of common terminal emulators allow you to configure the background/text colors, transparency, and so on.

idle seems to be using the tk toolkit, vlc uses qt (4 or 5?).
are the colors the same kind of wrong in both apps?

in any case, for qt you need... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...K_applications

not sure about tk...

Thank you both for the answer.
@ondoho they look similar, this is vlc https://image.ibb.co/bOEUJw/deepin_s...hot_J20356.png
I was thinking they are linked somehow, I mean that they could use the same standard GUI, because they look almost the same, with that strange yellowish foreground.
Do you know if maybe the problem could be something I installed, I dont know maybe compton or something like that

Those bugs seems to be affecting the font, and there was a recent freetype update that changed a few things around, and it's happening across graphics toolkits, so that's what I would think of. Fonts don't randomly decide to change colors if you're not even using any theme engines at all. Double check to make sure you're not starting one of those when X starts.

I think you should do some detective work surrounding freetype and fontconfig. I would make sure your config files are up to date and possibly reinstall freetype2. It was recently updated, so maybe you've got some stale files.

which version of vlc did you install?
what do your other apps look like?
you using a dark theme perchance?

as an archlinux user you should be able to answer all these questions in full detail.

I dont understand what do you mean with that sentence but I found it funny, I have been using linux for 2 weeks, im pretty much a newbie at this point, but I learn fast :)

anyway I found the problem, I have no theme installed, it was the ~/.Xresources settings, in particular the transparency: urxvt*background: [90]#282828
I thought this file wouldn't affects standalone apps but only terminal related ones, because some app, like browsers, chrome, firefox ecc have theyr graphics and couldn't care less about the Xresources file.
thanks everybody for the help, I should have investigate more before posting but sometimes I just don't want to waste time for something I probably don't know unless is some stupid shit like this

Wow! I'm glad you found the problem because I probably wouldn't have guessed that was the cause probably ever.

I'm aware of a few programs like xterm, emacs, and urxvt use Xresources, but wouldn't expect vlc or IDLE. I can't really find anything searching for 'Xresources' and either program name, and yet if I include 'idle*foreground:#0000FF' in Xresources it launches with blue text. That's a little ridiculous.

Welcome to LQ! If you're already running Arch then you're doing better than I am. ;)

i assume you are using some arch-based distro, and not really archlinux itself?
hint: if you were using archlinux, you'd have installed it like this.

Its arch linux and I know that guide, I follow it, the difference is after that, instead of installing a desktop environment (GNOME, Cinnamon, KDE and so on) I installed a windows manager (i3) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...user_interface and then I changed the graphics a little bit, or ricing it, how you call it, I found the inspiration in the subreddit unixporn
Greetings

haven't registered this before. i actually noticed that IDLE's tk interface uses Xresources colors.

i still wonder which version of vlc you installed. maybe this one: ??

2.2.6 umbrella, I took it from the main arch repository

this is interesting.
i thought vlc was a qt app essentially, but qt4 is only an optional dependency!
could you post the output of
`pacman -Qi vlc`
please?

sure
https://image.ibb.co/nhQMJw/Deepin_S...1003094507.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_me...ign_principles here confirms its qt4 for linux and windows, if I remember correctly when I installed vlc it wasn't working because qt4 was missing, so its "optional" but you basically have to install it lol
Greets

^ nice font.

but it really is an optional dependency; i have vlc already installed, then uninstalled qt4 yesterday, and vlc automagically changes to the ncurses interface.

anyhow, i mostly wanted to know if you have qt4 installed, and maybe sth else would've caught my eye, but it didn't.
i guess this means qt4 falls back on Xresources colours when you have "no theme" installed.