Is there a way to overwrite the text color in the main editor from options, like I can do for composition mode? I’m using a dark color for the background and need to make the text white, without changing the local attribute for text (otherwise I have to change it every time I switch the background color).
Thank you
As far as I know, there is not. That’s why I’ve given up on a dark background for the main editor.
That’s exactly what I was trying to do 
A bit early to give up when Dark Mode has only just been announced by Apple. 
I always stay an OS version behind
But seriously, have fun coding it! My own hope is that OS-level support will enable colour (as in inline annotations and the like) in dark mode.
A dragon can dream, can’t she?
The problem there is that many of those colours look bad against a dark background, so Scrivener overrides them to work with the background.
Which is why I roll my own colours. The Solarized palette is versatile, if not the latest thing in UI design. Indeed, I’ve given up on dark mode in iOS for that reason (I can’t see my text/highlight/annotation colours) and I don’t use a dark theme in Composition mode, when I use it at all.
The problem with rolling your own colours in an RTF editor is: what do they look like outside of this unnatural (in the sense of it not looking anything like paper, which is all RTF was designed for) background? If one is working purely within a self-contained environment, where all formatting in the editor is either transformed by the compiler or simply stripped out (for those writing with some form of markup), then I suppose it needn’t matter much—save for when you switch to light mode one day, or try and copy and paste some text into Pages/Word/Mail etc. and it comes out unreadable.
I wouldn’t mind colours in dark mode either. I fall under the “markup” crowd—colour in the text editor for me is 100% a self-contained and artificial construct that only exists for my own clarity. But even in my case, I’d have to wonder if on some bright day sitting out on a park bench if I’d not want to switch dark mode off—and then what, spend half an hour retooling all of my colours so that I can see marked text again? It wouldn’t be impossible—I never use direct formatting, so all colour is style driven and thus centrally changed, but do I really want go in and make that kind of large-scale modification to plural projects just because it’s a little too bright out right now?
And any kind of scheme based upon dynamic transformation of colour based on the value of that colour itself (rather than some abstract non-colour assignment like “string literals should be yellow in this mode and green in that mode”) is fraught with difficulties in a freeform environment. It’s one thing to invert (which can look ugly) in a read-only environment and another to try and do real work with the whole colour palette inverted.
Well, all of which is probably why Apple’s answer to the problem is: use a natural editor, or provide the option to do so, for cases where your software might need to work with “real world” content. In Mail for example, there will be a global switch to view the mail content itself as it would look in light mode, while the rest of Mail and the OS in general remains dark. Preview isn’t going to be converting PDFs to dark mode either. Dark mode isn’t going to mean a universally dark grey screen in 10.14.
As one that has used Adobe’s software in dark mode—where content areas are still normal looking for obvious reasons—I can attest to it being something you can get used to, and even acquire a taste for. The coding editor I use even has two theme settings: one for the UI and one for the editor, meaning I can run a dark UI (which I like), but a light editor (which I do sometimes like for text that is more like prose and less like a programming language).
Well, yes. I happen to work in an environment where “all formatting in the editor is either transformed by the compiler or simply stripped out.” Scrivener is easily set up that way 
. Copying and pasting to other RTF editors–what are these things you speak of, “Pages/Word/Mail”?
But seriously, I did rather anticipate ‘some abstract non-colour assignment like “string literals should be yellow in this mode and green in that mode”’. That’s the way [Another Writing Environment That Must Not Be Named] handles its themes, with a full set of colours for light mode, and another full set of colours for dark mode. Making a new theme for AWETMNBN is a tedious proposition, but once it’s done, documents look decent in either mode. Since AWETMNBN is a markup environment, the question of copying and pasting doesn’t enter into it.
And, for all the wonderful things claimed for dark mode, the fact is that I try it and abandon it with regularity not only in iOS Scrivener, and in Mac Scriv Composition Mode, but in every other app that I own that currently supports it. AWETMNBN, Editorial on iOS–I go back to light mode after a very short time. Colours being stripped in dark mode is only part of the reason, but it’s the easiest part to articulate.
Maybe dark mode is just harder on my eyes, even though it seems to me that everyone else finds it easier on theirs.
In any event, it’s not something that will affect me for a while, as I’ll just be installing High Sierra when the rest of the Mac universe is installing Mojave. So I think I’ll just bow out of this debate. I know that the L&L Design Team will come up with a damn fine UI with which I’ll have plenty of quibbles when I finally upgrade.
I’m also looking for this exact feature. I also shift background colors every few days to try and convince my brain it’s doing a new task. I would like to choose my font color without having to do it via individual styles. I don’t want an OS-level solution because I don’t want other windows (or even the other sub-panels in Scrivener changing. I don’t want my graphics being inverted, etc.
A simple “use this color unless the local style overrides it” would be very helpful. A simple day and night set would be really helpful.
This has been discussed previously:
There have been other threads as well—it’s not an uncommon wish, but as pointed out over the years: it’s on purpose.
I appreciate you taking time to respond to my post. I saw the other forum posts before choosing the “most recent” to reply to rather than create a new post.
The system-wide solution, the individually format each document solution, and the use composition mode solution do not work for my desired work environment.
See these screenshots with Netflix on one side and Scrivener on the other (and let’s ignore how awful that is for focus/attention):
Current work environment
Apple accessibility invert mode
Flux darkroom
Desired work environment (locally applied formatting, with Scrivener editor-background color changed)
Being able to apply formatting at the compile step per style is one of the reasons I like Scrivener.
The formatting in the work area where I’m dumping text shouldn’t affect compile, although I understand for simplicity at the compile step, it does.
This is why I posted about something that’s already been posted - to add my “I would also like this feature.” to the discussion. In any case, I still love and adore Scrivener. Thank you for your reply!