#461851 Several improvements to /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme

Package:
grub-common
Source:
grub2
Description:
GRand Unified Bootloader (common files)
Submitter:
Date:
2015-05-18 12:03:11 UTC
Severity:
normal
#461851#5
Date:
2008-01-21 08:25:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

again bugging you with a minor issue. ;)

I believe the highlighting of the menu items is ambigous when the newly
introduced background image is enabled.

Consider you have only two menu items. Which one is 'highlighted',
magenta or black?
Magenta is a dark color (at least on my CRT) and does not provide the
best possible contrast to black. Furthermore i believe that a colored
background indicates the selected menu item in a more obviuos way than
colored text.

Please consider applying the attached patch, it has proven to look nice
on my screen.
If you don't like it, please close this bug.

Cheers,
Fabian
#461851#8
Date:
2008-01-22 13:02:32 UTC
From:
To:
The devil is in the details!

I tested all (foreground, always black bg) colors previous to opting for
magenta/black.  This seems to be the one that looks best (at least in my
qemu).  I suppose I'll have to test this on a few real monitors and see
how this turns out.

Your interest is much appreciated.  But please give me a while before I can
try this more extensively.

Oops.
#461851#15
Date:
2008-01-22 13:16:31 UTC
From:
To:
Robert Millan schrieb:

Thank you for your effort!
#461851#18
Date:
2008-01-22 13:33:46 UTC
From:
To:
Ah, I'm sorry.  I missunderstood you.

Let's start over...

I don't think so.  Every piece of text is black;  it's not hard to figure
out that magenta is for highlighted items.

The problem is that, more importantly, it has to provide good contrast to
the light colors in background.  Try proposing another color that works
better for contrasting both with black and lightblue/white background.

Yes, but it's very ugly. :-(
#461851#23
Date:
2008-01-22 13:42:48 UTC
From:
To:
Robert Millan schrieb:

That's hard of course. This is why I proposed a colored background instead.

Ugly is relative! ;)
#461851#26
Date:
2008-01-22 15:07:37 UTC
From:
To:
You might also want to check what the debian art folks who provide this
image think about this.  Chances are their sense of aesthetics will be much,
much better than mine.

If you all reach a consensus about what looks best, that'll work much better
to convince me than a single opinion.  I don't want to get into a situation in
which every week someone proposes a new combination that looks "better" than
the other... ;-)
#461851#31
Date:
2008-01-23 08:23:09 UTC
From:
To:
Dear debian-desktop team,

I had a discussion with Robert Millan recently about the default color
theme for the GRUB2 boot menu (in case the background picture is
enabled). Robert's proposal was to use magenta colored text on a
transparent background for the highlighted entry and black text for the
others. I suggested to use a colored background for the highlighted
entry instead, because magenta appears very dark on my CRT making it
hard to tell the menu items apart. The whole discussion can be followed
in #461851.

Now we would like to listen to your opinion about which color
combination might look best with respect to both aesthetics and
accessibility.

Robert Millan schrieb:

I could not find a mailing list for Debian Arts, but I am CCing
debian-desktop instead. Chances are high to meet the same audience here,
I guess.

Sure. I hope we will find a consensus in debian-desktop.

Cheers,
Fabian
#461851#34
Date:
2008-01-23 09:20:13 UTC
From:
To:
Thanks Fabian
special;  just apt-get install grub-pc desktop-base.  When both are
installed, the background is automatically enabled.  From there you can
edit /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme if you want to try new color combinations
(or /boot/grub/grub.cfg for ephymeral changes).
#461851#39
Date:
2008-03-09 10:23:37 UTC
From:
To:
The menu could be improved by putting an arrow next to the currently
highlighted item.

Unicode gives us several to choose from: → ➔ ➣
#461851#42
Date:
2008-03-10 14:02:38 UTC
From:
To:
Will you provide a patch for this?
#461851#45
Date:
2008-04-30 11:02:12 UTC
From:
To:
tags 461851 wontfix
thanks

Tagging wontfix untill consensus is reached on which color looks best.  If that
doesn't happen, well, we'll keep magenta/black ;-)
#461851#54
Date:
2011-02-08 20:45:01 UTC
From:
To:
# grub2 is a dummy transitional package nowadays
reassign 461851 grub-pc

# see below
forcemerge 608283 461851

# re-set title destroyed by the merging
retitle 608283 Please allow setting custom text colors for the GRUB menu in /etc/default/grub
thanks

Am Montag, den 21.01.2008, 09:25 +0100 schrieb Fabian Greffrath:

As of today, the font and background colors for the default grub
background image are set by  desktop-base's
/usr/share/desktop-base/grub_background.sh script. The only thing that's
missing is support for setting custom colors. That's #608283[1] (and
friends).

Best regards

Alexander Kurtz

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=608283