I posted (a while back) a product support question related to my personal choice of a dark background and light lettering (white lettering on black is only an example, not what I use). Most of the Scrivener system (editor, binder, etc.) allows changing of colors so that the few of us who prefer to make our own choices can make them.
However, there are a few hidden or built-in functions in Scrivener that use hard-coded colors, and there is no way to change those – unless they are inheriting those colors from Mac/Windows schemes, and then there might be a way. I have no clue.
One of those built-in functions is the spell checker, specifically the as-you-type spell checker that uses a squiggly red underline to indicate that Scrivener does not recognize the word, or that it is misspelled according to the active dictionary.
The squiggly red underline is a preset hard coded color, and cannot be changed. For those of us who choose a dark background (perhaps including red – I cannot know), hard coded colors like the internal spell checker make it easy to miss.
Unrelated to my choice of editor color schemes, I am also color blind/color deficient, a disability that affects perhaps ten percent of the population (though most are male). The dark squiggly red underline is almost invisible to color-blind individuals, even in the best of conditions. It appears indistinguishable from black (or very very close to it), which makes it difficult to see even with the standard Scrivener colors – but even worse when we adjust the rest of the colors to suit our color blind condition.
The answer to my support condition was: “Yes, we recognize that you cannot change that color. Please turn off the as-you-type spell checker and use the document spell checker instead.” That’s a nice workaround, but for me it doesn’t cut it. I correct/revise as I go. I don’t like the separate “document spell checker”, because it will bring up a word and then another word and then another word, all of them wrong according to its heuristics, but completely out of context. The inline as-you-type spell checker is an awesome advance, because it flags a word right away – while you’re in the middle of crafting a sentence and paragraph. In other words, it’s in context, and it is easy (if the word is highlighted as potentially wrong) to tell if it is a misspelling, typo, or if it actually belongs there and you need to add it to your personal dictionary.
Please fix this. Allow all colors to be adjusted/overwritten, even if they rely on a subroutine that likes to hard-code colors for you. I gave one specific example. There well could be others.
This affects anyone who uses a dark editor background (potentially 20%?). Workaround? Use a light background.
It also affects colorblind users (8-17% of males, 2% of females). Workaround? Use the full document spell checker.
I do not see that either of these workarounds are acceptable in the long term development and support of Scrivener. Yes, they will get me through until next month, or whenever. They will not do for a long-term solution.