I’m really enjoying the additional visual identification the icons provide, but there’s a problem with how it is implemented.
I often use dark label colors, and because the label colors alter the overall color of the icon, darker colors would obscure the icons. IMO that is not as useful as if the label colors don’t affect the icons at all, since it’s unnecessary to color the icons the same color as the labels.
As a related note, I really wish we can customize the color of the font in the Binder/Outliner too, instead of just the labels. The automatic switching from black to white font based on the assessment of the label color isn’t optimal and creates frustrating limitations (especially for someone like me, who customizes the hell out of his GUI in all the software he uses). It would be nice if each unique label color can also have the option of having unique font color too, and the default font color for files without labels assigned can be customized also.
Have you tried enabling the Use Label Color In > Binder and … In > Outliner Rows options in place of … In > Icons? That would put the colour just as a stripe behind the title but leave the icon uncoloured.
Customising the text colour of individual items in the binder and outliner isn’t possible with the way these elements are constructed. We are looking at customising the selection colour (currently it is just the standard Windows selection), which might help avoid the dark/light shift when you select an item.
Ahhh, that’s exactly what I wanted (no color for icons). Thanks!
If it’s not possible to customize individual item’s font color, is it at least possible to set the overall font color (instead of being set automatically to black or white only based on the label color)?
Great, glad that worked for you.
A single text colour in the binder might be technically possible. There are a lot of options already, so this isn’t currently planned, especially since the default contrast built in is usually desirable to keep the text legible without a lot of additional work. More options add more complexity, and we’re already grappling with the best way to present the preferences to keep Scrivener’s flexibility without overwhelming users. So I’ll put this on the list for consideration, but no promises that it will end up being added.
The default behavior of switching automatically from black to white would be fine, if it worked properly, but it doesn’t–not quite.
See, the problem is that whatever algorithm used to assess a label’s color and then determine if it’s light or dark enough to trigger the black or white text, is not appropriate in this context. For example, in Photoshop, when you take a colored image and want to turn it into black and white, there are a few algorithms you can use that will give you wildly different results, and this is because Photoshop will either assess the colors by strictly linear mathematical calculation based on numbers in the RGB channels and treat all three channels the same, or Photoshop will use a more advanced algorithm, where the RGB channels are not treated the same, since we don’t perceive them the same visually (for example, blue obviously appears darker than green, as does red).
What Scrivener is doing, is treating all three channels the same, so that it does not take into consideration how a color actually looks, but only how the numbers are mathematically. The result then, is that some hues will require the lightness to be dropped much lower than others before the font will turn white (for example, green hues), and that is very problematic when you need to have a medium to darker green that isn’t triggering the white font. Black font on a relatively dark green makes it hard to see. This is just one example, and there are others, depending on which hue, and at what lightness, or even what saturation level. The contrast is often too strong or not strong enough.
That is why I suggested allowing us to choose our own font color, so we can bypass the inappropriate algorithm used by Scrivener to assess label colors. Another solution would be for Scrivener to adopt the correct algorithm for assessing label colors so the font color switching is more accurate.