[LAD] Mouse/knob interaction

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Arnold Krille's message of 2010-09-08 22:02:10 +0200:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wednesday 08 September 2010 21:06:29 Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> > Excerpts from Arnold Krille's message of 2010-09-08 19:18:54 +0200:
> > > On Wednesday 08 September 2010 16:35:31 Andrew Bryant wrote:
> > > > Previously:
> > > > > That's actually a neat idea, color for immediate visual feedback. I
> > > > > imagine the problem is the colors. What would be sane? I guess three
> > > > > basic colors and interpolate between them?
> > > > > low = blue
> > > > > middle = yellow
> > > > > high = top
> > > > > 
> > > > > It needs to be rather intuitive. I guess the more colors the less
> > > > > intuitive it will become. Maybe two are enough.
> > > > > I wonder which color would best represent 'low' or 'bottom'.
> > > > > Blue, black?
> > > > 
> > > > I suggest you keep it simple, i.e. only two colours if possible, but
> > > > make them configurable for the benefit of those with visual
> > > > disabilities.
> > > 
> > > Two colors simply isn't enough. You need a color for low, a color for
> > > middle and a value for high. And then you haven't even looked at a
> > > fourth color for mute/off.
> > > And fading from green directly/linear to red gives an ugly brown in the
> > > middle. It looks much nicer to go across yellow. And then you can really
> > > use that third color to stand for a special step, not just "in the
> > > middle of the slider".
> > If all you want is 'middle' and that doesn't need to be well defined,
> > then two colors will do. I suggested blue because of the ugly brown you
> > get between green and red. With blue the middle will likely be some kind
> > of purple, which may or may not be optimal. Maybe black to red would be
> > nicer, it just gives you an increasingly bright red.
> 
> I don't want 'a' middle, I want a special middle. Like 0dB between -48dB and 
> +12dB (the middle doesn't have to be in the geometrical middle). And I want to 
> know when that special middle value is reached by looking at the color.
> 
> > Mute/off, if required, would be the same as the lowest setting.
> 
> There is a difference between mute/off and the lowest setting. At least there 
> can be.
> Software-mixers might not make that discrete step between off and almost 
> silent. But some hardware mixers in devices do make that difference. And there 
> it will make a difference to your ear whether the signal is attenuated by 36dB 
> or muted.

I was talking about controls in general, which means there might not be
any dB or mute or anything like that, it might be anything, and there
might be special cases/settings where you want a special color, agreed.

> > > If these colors are taken from the color-scheme the user has chosen, I
> > > feel confident, that these are suitable for all kinds of color-blindness
> > > (otherwise the color-scheme is chosen wrongly). But I don't know (yet)
> > > which color roles to use from the color-schemes...
> > To what kind of user chosen color scheme do you refer to?
> 
> The one the user choose for his desktop. Which is the only real way to 
> compensate for visually impaired people (if thats the political correct name).
> I don't like this every-app-chooses-its-own-colors at all. Though I do 
> understand that sometimes you need more colors, but that still is different 
> from "I define my apps colors on my own because I think that is cool". The 
> later results in apps with black text on dark-gray background in an otherwise 
> very light desktop-environment => bad. Or in apps with white window background 
> while the rest of the desktop is optimized for on-stage-in-the-dark with black 
> background and red foreground => bad. Or it results with using two collors to 
> "distinguish" which half visually impaired people can't discriminate => bad.
> 
> Thats why I really advocate using the systems color-scheme as much as possible 
> (and a bit more) every time the discussion regarding colors comes up.
> 
> Have fun,
> 
> Arnold

I don't know of any way to set a system wide color scheme of any sort. I
know of different toolkits using their specific settings, and that's as
close to a system color theme as I'm aware of. I did switch to a dark
theme and managed to get qt use the GTK theme, but that still leaves a
lot of programs out of the equation. Note that Desktop-Environments in
the sense of gnome/kde is something I despise, mainly because of their
current understanding of 'integration', which in practice means to
almost force users to use certain programs and an unbelievable
dependency hell. They each create their very specific ecosystem in which
they attempt to 'integrate' everything else, which just means to make
stuff dependent on more and more of the ecosystems specific subsystems.
/rant

Well, I don't know how to achieve anything like a system color scheme in
the foreseeable future.
-- 
Philipp

--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu
und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan