Subject: Re: bug#51556: 29.0.50; Poor contrast of Customize SVG icons with dark backgrounds

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2021 11:43:08 -0700

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> If the solution you propose only works for SVG that specify no
> foreground, then it won't be able to solve all of the situations where
> a different theme makes an icon barely visible or unpleasant to the
> eye.

It is certainly the correct solution for all the sets of scalable icons
that I have reviewed.  Which SVG icons do you have in mind?  Could you
point me to them?

For the icons I know of, the best solution if you need to change the
color of this or that icon, is to either change the active defface to
use the correct color, or to introduce a new defface.  This is, not by
accident, the chosen solution also for icons on the web.

> Which is why I think a better solution would be to allow themes
> to specify different icons where necessary.

Color themes should not *need* to provide their own icons when all they
want is to change the color of an icon.  That puts an unnecessary and
completely avoidable burden on theme developers, for starters because
they would need to learn how to edit SVG files (which is not trivial).
It is also less flexible, as how icons look is orthogonal to what color
they have.

If you propose that this should exist as an option, that is fine by me,
but I don't see any need for it.

I don't think we should impose an inflexible solution when I have
already indicated in several messages that I'm working on a better one.
The solution you propose goes in the completely opposite direction of
that work, so I hope that we won't do that.

Furthermore, the patch I have already posted here is sufficient for the
purposes of this bug report.  I suggest we install it.