#223 Dark mode with light-on-dark tools and black background start

[Aaron Wolf]

I'd like to see a dark mode where all the painting starts on black background and everything else set like light-on-dark buttons.

[William Kendrick]

I could see this being implemented as two separate options:
1. "Dark mode" theme option -- UI elements that are normally drawn in white (pop-ups, the info area at the bottom, etc.) appearing in a darker color, with light-colored text.
2. An option, similar to --startblank, that allows specifying a specific starter or template or solid color background (simply specifying R,G,B values) to appear.

Regarding the first idea: more generically, it could simply be two options: one to set background color, one to set foreground/text color. (Separately from this, we've thought about allowing the entire UI to be themed -- to allow users to choose something different than the 2002-era "aqua" buttons; the original Mac OS X look. See https://sourceforge.net/p/tuxpaint/feature-requests/78/. [*]. And more recently, we've thought once again about allowing different UI fonts to be selected. See https://sourceforge.net/p/tuxpaint/feature-requests/146/.)

For the second idea, one trouble I see is that --startblank is specifically meant to avoid loading the last-saved image, and instead always start with a blank canvas. We could perhaps cause this new option to only begin a session with a specific starter/template/solid-color, if Tux Paint was starting out with a blank canvas. Then, if you always want this, simply specify this proposed new option along with --startblank.

[*] See also high-contrast: https://sourceforge.net/p/tuxpaint/feature-requests/79/

[Yurk Sha]

Greetings for 2002 era from 2022!)
We definitely need more love for the interface - basically for window composition, icon/button/font ratio. Themes support is only way to fit tastes of different generations.

Regarding dark mode -- I think that two options should be "in a bundle" of dark-mode functionality. And regarding second option -- it's not enough to just apply background color. All drawing colors should be a bit "silent" and all stamps edges should be prepared for dark background, otherwise it will looks much more cropped.