#1200 Contrast between sidebars (line and folding) is low

[Sworddragon]

After upgrading SciTE from version 3.7.2 to version 4.0.0 I'm noticing that the line sidebar is now more bright and not easy to distinguish between the folding sidebar on the right of it (it actually hurts on the eyes on looking at this). Maybe this can be enhanced a bit to make this look better again.

[Neil Hodgson]

This was a deliberate choice to match current GUI environments. 'actually hurts the eyes' is hyperbolae as the majority of window backgrounds are already light grey or white.

You should change the appropriate settings if you want different visuals.

[Sworddragon]

Not sure what window backgrounds have to do with it as the window is normally in it's own context. But maybe there are some window managers that do not draw strict separation lines.

'actually hurts the eyes' is hyperbolae

No, it isn't. But maybe this is more hard to notice on an IPS panel. But on a TN panel (which still might be the default) on the top the sidebars have a halfway good contrast while at the bottom they nearly merge. Maybe this case was not considered - probably many designers miss it. But currently it looks just not smartly designed and by far something that would be considerered barrier-free.

[Neil Hodgson]

'actually hurts the eyes' is hyperbolae

No, it isn't.

Eye pain from less than 10% of the window changing from 76% to 90%? When its located next to the text area which is 10 times as wide with 100%?

[Sworddragon]

What are 76%, 90% and 100% referencing to?

[Neil Hodgson]

The background colour brightness (luminance) as a proportion of pure white.

[Sworddragon]

Which does then mean that the line sidebar was 2,4 times darker before - that's more than just significant. However, as mentioned above a TN panel contributes negatively to the remaining 10% while 24% could catch this better. In case you get the chance for it you should really check this on a TN panel at the different heights.

[Sworddragon]

You said above that I shall change the settings if I want different visuals and so I made a look at http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDoc.html to figure out which setting changes the background color for the line sidebar. On searching for color and colour I did found the option to change the folding sidebar color (fold.margin.colour) but I couldn't find anything to change the line sidebar color. I would expect it to be something like line.margin.colour and on trying my luck on it it had no effect. Do I miss something or is it just not possible to change the color of the line sidebar?

[desto]

The setting you're looking for is style.*.33. Its old default value was back:#C0C0C0,$(font.base).

I agree that the settings are a little all over the place. While something like line.margin.color would make more sense, style.* allows to define different colors for different lexers. However, that certainly is a niche case for usually global stylings such as editor backgrounds.

[Sworddragon]

Thanks for the information as the styling seems to be not explained at the link above (maybe it is hidden somewhere else). One interesting thing is if you leave style..33 empty ("style..33=") the background color gets just very minimal darker (and this is enough to look fine then for a light design) while I would expect it to either basically break or just to use the default.

Neil, can you check the the line sidebar with "style.*.33=" and tell us if this would be light enough to be a default? Because I still think there should be a more stable default to avoid the issues already mentioned.

Edit: The code formation eats some wildmarks and it seems raw text is here not supported.

[Neil Hodgson]

style.*.33= is noticeably darker (87%) than similar screen elements in current GTK+ themes compared to 90%. In similar elements, where a background colour change is used instead of a border between parts of a pane, the default theme on Fedora 26 uses #E8E8E7 for a slightly warmer appearance than SciTE's #E7E7E7. GTK+ uses #F4F4F3 for side bars.

[Sworddragon]

Is it really so much darker so it would be an issue (as I have a hard time to imagine why this should make troubles)?. But the current state with 90% isn't the holy grail too. Are there other options that might be able to solve this issue (like a dark separation line - but I'm not sure about it)?

[Neil Hodgson]

The current setting looks good. If you don't like it then change your properties.