mc colours schemes in XFCE 4.16 terminal

[Rava]

My system:

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guest@porteus:~$ cat /etc/porteus/*
001-core.xzm:20221006
002-xorg.xzm:20221006
002-xtra.xzm:20220630
003-xfce.xzm:20220925
initrd.xz:20201102

Some details about the most recent updates are off.
002-xtra.xzm is not part of that update in folder updates/core/20220924/ but 00[12]-?o* (=bash parlance, grep parlance: 00[12]-.o) are:

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root@porteus:/# ls -oL $PORTDIR/base/00[12]-?o*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 guest 127279104 2022-10-09 12:48 /mnt/sda1/Porteus_5.0/porteus/base/001-core.xzm
-rwxrwxrwx 1 guest 116957184 2022-10-09 12:48 /mnt/sda1/Porteus_5.0/porteus/base/002-xorg.xzm
root@porteus:/# md5sum $PORTDIR/base/00[12]-?o*
087e196ed3e7a8750b32031e3221fc2b  /mnt/sda1/Porteus_5.0/porteus/base/001-core.xzm
9a1afb69141822791d5a114909725431  /mnt/sda1/Porteus_5.0/porteus/base/002-xorg.xzm

As you can see by the md5sums, my files are from the /20220924/ updates:

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root@porteus:/mybin/linux/porteus/5.0/x86-64/updates_core# grep /20220924/ updates.txt |grep 00[12]-.o
087e196ed3e7a8750b32031e3221fc2b  ./20220924/001-core.xzm/ 121.4M
9a1afb69141822791d5a114909725431  ./20220924/002-xorg.xzm/ 111.5M

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While the standard appearance set in mc "darkfar" is nice for the eyes, it has a fatal flaw - at least in XFCE 4.16 terminal. (version of 003-xfce is 4.16 and 20220925)

When you select "text / normal" files, e.g. .txt or .xml files, the colour scheme used for the selected and non-selected is the very same.

Here a compiled screenshot, in left is darkfar, and on the right a different dark theme, gotar. In both instances the first 4 files have been selected - which you cannot see on the left side that is done using darkfar scheme.


Same is true for e.g. colour scheme "dark" or "featured" - "featured-plus" makes a distinction between selected and non-selected files.

Sadly, gotar has a flaw of its own.
When you have selected a file or files, and move the cursor bar over one of these selected files, then the colour of that file changes to that one of the unselected files.
Only when the cursor bar moves on you see that it is still selected because then the coiolour changes back to that of a selected file.
At least that is true for text files e.g. txt, xml
Looking into other files, it seems that is only true for "text files e.g. txt, xml" - setup files are displayed white when unselected, red when selected and light brown (="dark yellow") when the cursor is above one of the selected files - and light brown is the very colour this scheme uses for "text files e.g. txt, xml".

A dark theme that displays selected and unselected files differently, and also uses a cursor colour that is different than selected files is "nicedark" - but I have not yet tried out all kind of files to see if that holds true also for e.g. compressed files, graphics files and so on.
Still, even "nicedark" manages to have a flaw of its own - in it when the menu bar is not selected (as in: no menu is pulled down) then it displays only a dark box.

Above the non active menu bar in darkfar
in the middle the non active menu bar in gotar
below the non active menu bar in nicedark which looks like black text on black background.


Would there be an interest in getting these issues fixed?
Probably these bugs are already fixed by someone but these fixes not found their way into the official slackware package of mc.
I look into it how support and user bug reports are handled for mc and report back.

Also possible that some of these bugs with selected files and cursor hovering over these is not possible to fix for all kinds of files due to the restricted colours available.

But what can be fixed is the invisible menu in "nicedark".

[Rava]

Update
I was in the process of creating a libgtk-x11-2.0 module out of my 003- XFCEv4.12 module, since 003-xfce (V4.16) lacks that library, and geany needs it.

Using mc's colours scheme "gotar" I realized that it's unable to distinguish between its reed for the symlinks when highlighted and its red for the symlinks when not highlighted.


You cannot see the full file names, but above file is libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 and the next one is libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.2400.33.
Above the yellow divider line there are 107 files highlighted (to be deleted) and in the below one only 106 - still you cannot distinguish between the two.
The difference is between libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 also highlighted (above) and not (below)…

As I presumed already, it is most likely impossible when using a colours palette of only 16 colours to be able to distinguish between all kinds of files and their selected/non-selected state.

[beny]

hi Rava but julia256 don't like you or you have see cyberpunk77 anime....you like flash color..

[Rava]

julia256 don't like you

Indeed Julia doesn't like me, or more precise: my terminal causes mc to tell me:

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┌──────────────────────── Error ────────────────────────┐
│                                                       │  
│ Unable to use 'julia256' skin with 256 colors support │  
│              on non-256 colors terminal.              │
│             Default skin has been loaded              │
│                                                       │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

terminal is xfce-terminal in its default settings.

But you are right, darkfar is more pleasant to the eyes than "gotar" is.

[Rava]

I realized now that it all could be even worse.
I switched back to darkfar since that is more pleasant to the eyes… and came across some .tmp files in /tmp to see that I don't see anything:

Above it what these files look like when the cursor is not upon them, below is what it looks like when one of the files is under the cursor:

One of my favourite colours combinations: either black on black or white on white. </irony>