https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61246

--- Comment #3 from Stephan Hennig <[email protected]> ---
@Michael: There are two (I can think of) ways to determine visible background
colour, depending on the meaning of the colour.

1. Background reflects a document property.

2. Background reflects a UI property.

I couldn't find means in LibreOffice to set the paper colour of a document. 
That's not a surprise, because you hardly ever use ink to colour a page. 
Instead, documents are printed to coloured paper.  Such paper colour is outside
of LibreOffice's control.  (BTW, menu Format => Page => Background doesn't set
a printed page background, but the background of the type area only.)

Having said that, it seems more sensible to consider visible background a UI
property.  Best default for that is to follow system theme.

Now, LibreOffice 4.0 throws in a third colour, white, without any relation to
one of both alternatives discussed above.  This seems a rather random change.  
The commit message mentioned in comment 2 reads:

> The font and document color of a Writer document or an
> Impress presentation should not be derived from a desktop
> theme. A Writer documents needs to look good on paper. An
> Impress presentation may have it's own theme. The
> appearance of a document should not change by changing the
> desktop theme.
> 
> With this change a document looks the same on any computer
> if the user do not change the default colors.

Concerning Writer documents looking good on paper, how does that justify a
hard-coded white background?  When looking on white paper, you see reflected
light.  A computer screen, on the other hand, emits light.  Staring at a screen
is much more a strain to the eye than to look at paper.  That's the reason some
people change system-wide background to a less aggressive colour.  And as is
written above, LibreOffice actually has no way to know the colour of the paper
a document is printed to.

Concerning Impress documents, that is a valid concern, but a special case.  But
keep in mind that a silver screen, again, /reflects/ light.  Therefore, a white
presentation background is not too much a strain to the eye.

How about a new per-document setting, that allows to determine the meaning of
the background colour?  For Impress documents, that could certainly default to
some particular colour (white).  For Writer and Calc documents, the previous
default (following system theme) seems more sensible.

Side note, neither has this change to LibreOffice 4.0 been mentioned in the
release notes, nor did I see a description how to change it back to LibreOffice
3.6.5 behaviour.

Thanks,
Stephan Hennig

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.
_______________________________________________
Libreoffice-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice-bugs

Reply via email to