Change Theme "Fixed Width Background color" when using Page View

General
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Can someone please tell me how to change the “Fixed Width Background” color when using the “Page View” option to display the page?

I am able to change the “Fixed Width Background” when using the continuous page view (canvas that scrolls endlessly, rolling page, you know: no visual page break) though. The setting is under “Appearance, Main Editor, Colors.”

However, the “Appearance, Page View, Colors” only has one option to change: Background. This only changes the color background of the actual page where the text is, not the “Fixed Width Background” which surrounds the page (outside the page).

I already tried with every single “background” option I found, even those that obviously do not have anything to do with the surrounding background color of the page.

Yes, I tried under the Main Editor, Outliner, Page View, Binder, etc.

This does not work either (found here in the forum):

“turn off fixed width editor (File / Options / Appearance - Main editor- Then make sure Use fixed width editor is unticked. Restart Scrivener and you will find the page view can be different from its background ( go to file / options /appearance /colours /then Editor and editor again in the drop down list to change page colour.”

“MimeticMouton
Jun '18
You can change the editor colour under File > Options > Appearance > General); that will affect both single text mode and Scrivenings. There’s not yet an option for changing the fixed width background, but this will be coming; the Options aren’t all updated and shuffled around yet. You might for now want to switch off using a fixed width editor (under Appearance > Main Editor), or perhaps try working more in composition mode, where you can set both the editor page and screen background colours to something dark and use the slider in the control panel at the bottom to keep the text to a good width.”

Based on this last forum statement back in 2018, it was not possible, but we are now at the end of 2022. If this is still the same, why? Why not add that option? It’s already there for the “rolling” or continuous page view mode, why not for Page View?

Does anyone know of where I can find the most detail information on how to change every color of the theme?

Even changing the transparency on the “corkboard” does not work with some themes.

I have gone as far as manually editing the “.pal” and “.qss” files (found inside the custom theme file which uses the extension .scrtheme -just rename it to zip to be able to access those files and when done rename it back), and I actually found the background color in the .pal file at line 3 which reads: “Window(220,222,221) //A general background color” Yes, I am trying to modify the “Gray Matter Lite” Theme which uses this RGB for the area in question. The color is also found at line 23, in the section “//BASE PALETTE SHADES”.

Changing the color here will change it for more than what I want though.

Thank you, for any help provided.

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In this recent thread, our resident theme expert @AntoniDol mentioned that he created a Reddit Community for Scrivener Theme builders. It might be worth checking out.

Best,
Jim

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Changing the Window color in the Palette will change more than just the Page View background color, so it’s unlikely that’s a valid option.

I’ll have to investigate, but as far as I know, there’s never a distinction between the paper color and the background color in the Windows version.

I’ll keep you informed when I’ve looked into it:

For starters: The PageView background has nothing to do with “Fixed Width Editor” the size of the page is either determined by the File > Print Setup setting, or by the Compile Page Setup setting and which one is selectable in the File > Options > Appearance > Page View > Options tab.

The background of the PageView is changed in File > Appearance > Page View > Color > Background and it’s the only option there. So for now, the page and the background cannot be different colors on Windows.

When you save your preferences in File > Options > Manage > Save Theme Options to File… you can add that file as the .prefs-file in your Theme zip and it will show the chosen background color, among other settings in that preferences file:
TextEditing\Colors\PageViewBackgroundColor=@Variant(\0\0\0\x43\x1\xff\xff\x6\x6\r\r[[\0\0)

Hope this helps

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On the Corkboard, only the transparency of the Status Stamps can be changed, not the color of any background colors. It’s actually possible to overrule the Corkboard pattern background in a Theme if you’re not cateful.

The best resource for changing any colors is currently the book “Mastering Scrivener”, but I’m writing “Mastering Scrivener Themes” at the moment, which will contain much more information about Themes than the three pages in the first book.

You can change all “Palette” colors to RGBA color notation in the QSS. You can also use Named Colors if you want.

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