Define Color of Search Highlight

English
, ,
#1

The forums are littered with this question with only circumstantial answers. Some mention a setting that is no longer in the path they denote while others proclaim it to be your OS theme. This seems to be based on people running Win/Mac or *nix full [read: popular] DE’s. Despite that the number of questions should still indicate this does not work as intended or satisfactorily for many people and should be changed/revised to allow a user defined color.

Given I do not run a DE this answer is largely meaningless / useless. There must be a way to define the color that does not assume various system features exist much less require you to change your whole system theme / UI for one setting?!

It seems rather insane to allow users to define colors that for whatever reason might oppose or clash with a system theme to then allow the system theme to define/override the color theme set for the application.

At present the only cheese workaround is to install various GTK themes and launch with GTK_THEME=“something”.

Gtk4 port of libreoffice
#2

Since both Mac and many Linux distributions have relatively easy steps to change system colours, I assume you are on Windows. In that case asking for a bug fix from Windows might be best. I recall seeing a feature request for Powertoys to change system colours for highlight, Ability to customize Text Highlight color · Issue #17069 · microsoft/PowerToys · GitHub.

What is DE?

#3

I would read as Desktop Environment

#4

In that case my entire comment is pointless.

#5

Indeed “DE” is Desktop Environment and indeed I am not on Windows or MacOS.

My colors are defined in .ctwmrc thus all this “just change it in your OS” [read: Desktop Environment] answers are non-answers for anyone like myself. Unless that is Libreoffice adds a “get colors from .Xdefaults” option. ;p

#6

Could you be more specific so that we can understand the limitations of already given but supposed inadequate answers?

#7

I do not run a DE much less a GTK based DE thus all the “change your theme” answers are irrelevant when I do not run the type of environment they assume will change the highlight color. LibreOffice has no clue what my “theme” / UI colors are as I said all are defined in .ctwmrc or .Xdefaults.

#8

Left for us to infer from the dribble of information provided is that OP is using the CTWM - or maybe ctwm - window manager where the config file thereof is used to define UI colours and other display options.

#9

Given my initial post says I do not run a DE, what I run would be to a degree irrelevant when all the solutions are based on fixed UI like on Windows or MacOS or a full DE on *Nix. The point is LibreOffice assumes something GTK or the Qt - GTK compatibility which not everyone has/uses. More so even when a user does have those things there is clearly an issue where the common themes or color controls are not cutting it for users thus why there are so many questions on here about changing this one element.

#10

Basically, whether there is a DM (desktop manager) or not, the end result is to retrieve parameters meaningful for the WM (window manager). A DM is an intermediate layer between applications and WM. So, “change your theme” should be read “change the ‘OS’ parameters relevant in your environment”, be it a simple WM without DM.

If highlight colour is not (or badly) retrieved by LO, this may be because the WM uses a rather different protocol to communicate with applications. I read here that CTWM only support basic EWMH protocol. This could be the cause if the required function is not supported.

You say you don’t use a DM. This is legitimate since Linux is supposed to offer total configuration freedom. But this does not imply the choice of the widget library which is approximately independent from the DM/WM. You mentioned you downloaded various GTK themes which have caused installing GTK+ library. (By the way, you didn’t mention your Linux distro, nor the package manager if any). We assume then you have installed the libreoffice-gtk3 package so that LO handles consistently the widget. Since you consider installing GTK themes as a workaround, check package libreoffice-x11 is installed and launch LO with command line SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice to see if there is a difference.

Note package names may differ between distros.

#11

Indeed no DE/DM, most outside KDE are GTK based and GTK broke XScreen enumeration around version 3.1-3.2. Given I run multi GPU and XScreens allow workload segregation this was an exodus for me from “common” setups.

What I have installed is LibreOffice-Still. libreoffice-x11 is not installed. Arch / Garuda here.

#12

Try starting LO like this:

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen libreoffice7.5

And for better highlighting of selected document content:

#13

Works after I stood on my head and chanted Yama Yama Yama for a while. It’s beyond reckoning how there is a whole UI preference panel for user defined colors but this isn’t allowed. Having to do such hacky horse crap to get something usable is nuts. Thanks for the info Villeroy. They really need to just add the flipping option to the normal appearance UI. This was a PITA even back when I ran XFCE or LXDE which just goes back to the fact even with full DE’s this “color” is never picked up or defined correctly from the system theme.

Impressum (Legal Info) | Datenschutzerklärung (Privacy Policy)   Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.