[Sugar-devel] Background Screen Color for SoaS Activity

[Art Hunkins]

Gary -

Thanks so much for these helpful suggestions.

With them I've been able to change the color of the basic Sugar display, and 
to create boxes of differing colors.

Several major issues remain (which may not be surmountable?):
1) when text displayed on the basic screen (in no box) - that area reverts 
to gray;
2) importantly, nothing else displays in my colored boxes; this includes 
frames, other boxes, text and buttons.

Can you guide me toward solutions here?

I'm basically modifying Lazzarini's csndsugui.py. Here is the revised box 
code:

    def box(self, vert=True, colour=(0xFFFF, 0xFFFF, 0xFFFF), parent=None, 
padding=5):
       """creates a box
           vert: True, creates a vertical box; horiz.
            otherwise
           parent: parent box, None if this is a toplevel box
           padding: box padding
           returns the widget instance"""
       if vert:
         box = gtk.VBox()
       else:
         box = gtk.HBox()
       self.event_box = gtk.EventBox()
       self.event_box.modify_bg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, gtk.gdk.Color(colour[0], 
colour[1], colour[2], 0))
       if parent:
         parent.pack_start(self.event_box)
       else:
         self.outbox.pack_start(self.event_box)
       self.window.set_canvas(self.outbox)
       self.boxes.append(box)
       self.event_box.show()
       box.show()
       return box

I suspect that chaages in the last few lines are required (especially in the 
"boxes" line and probably the packing).

And here is the current "text" code. I rather imagine if this could be 
gotten to display in a box with the box retaining its color, I might be on 
the way to success (but this may be the hard part; can other things be 
displayed "over" an event_box?). This code is straight from Lazzarini:

    def text(self, name, box=None,colour=(0,0,0)):
      """Creates a static text label
         name: text label
         box: parent box, None if text is to be placed toplevel
         colour: RGB values in a tuple (R,G,B)
         returns the widget instance"""
      label = gtk.Label(name)
      label.modify_fg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, 
gtk.gdk.Color(colour[0],colour[1],colour[2], 0))
      if box:
       box.pack_start(label, False, False, 5)
      else:
       self.outbox.pack_start(label, False, False, 5)
      label.show()
      return label

I very much appreciate your help. I, too, wonder if all this hassling over 
color is worth it. If only there were some simple way to make the overall 
display white instead of gray! I'm wanting the color change strictly for 
readability; I need more color contrast to read the text (which is 
unfortunately profuse in my project).

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gary C Martin" <gary at garycmartin.com>
To: "Art Hunkins" <abhunkin at uncg.edu>
Cc: "Tomeu Vizoso" <tomeu at sugarlabs.org>; <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Background Screen Color for SoaS Activity


> Hi Art,
>
> On 7 Jul 2009, at 03:46, Art Hunkins wrote:
>
>> Tomeu,
>>
>> I've had no luck modifying background color for anything except  buttons.
>>
>> No boxes, even when the box is completely empty.
>>
>> Does anyone know how to change the color of the entire screen, or of  a 
>> box?
>
> I can remember hitting my head on this when first playing with gtk. I 
> wanted a black area to place a moon image in. The trick seems to be  using 
> a gtk.EventBox(). Have a look in moon.py at about line #114:
>
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/moon/repos/mainline/trees/master
>
> Just quickly scraped out the lines I think might be interesting, does 
> seem quite a bit for just a black screen :-)
>
> # Create the main activity container
> self.main_view = gtk.HBox()
>
> # Blackness
> self.event_box = gtk.EventBox()
> colormap = gtk.gdk.colormap_get_system()
> self.black_alloc_color = colormap.alloc_color('black')
> self.event_box.modify_bg(gtk.STATE_NORMAL, self.black_alloc_color)
> self.main_view.pack_end(self.event_box)
>
> # Display everything
> self.event_box.show()
> self.main_view.show()
> self.set_canvas(self.main_view)
> self.show_all()
>
> Regards,
> --Gary