claws mail folder and message list selected item background colour/color

[davearn]

I and my wife have used claws-mail for years. We both were using version 3.17.5 until a couple of days ago when I upgraded my wife's laptop with the latest release of linux mint and then installed claws-mail which turned out to be version 4.0.0.
On version 3.17.5 selected folders and message lines appear with white text on a mid green background which is quite readable.
On version 4.0.0 we are getting black text on a dark blue background which is difficult to read.
I have been unable to find any way to change the text colour or background colour for such highlighted lines. I have checked claws-mail documentation and done general searches.

Assuming there isn't a way of directly changing these colours in claws-mail, it seems that maybe I might be able to change some parameters for GTK (in gtkrc?) but I cannot find out which or how.
Can anyone enlighten me please on if this can be done and how to go about it?
Will there be effects on other applications or is there a way to do it that will only effect claws-mail?

Thanks.

[davearn]

Further to my post above I have noticed something that might be significant and lead to a solution. First of all I should have mentioned we both use cinnamon.

In the release of Cinnamon 5.6.8 with this new version of Linux Mint 21.1 Vera it seems that items that are selected on the desktop and other applications' selected items have blue associated with them: eg items on the tool bar that have active windows and active index items in Document Viewer also have the blue colour. With the older version of linux mint 20.3/Cinnamon 5.2.7 these same items are green.

Is it likely that claws mail is using a 'standard' colour for highlighted/selected items that applies to the whole system?
Is there a way of changing that color?

I hope someone can advise - thanks.

[Second Round]

I think I had a similar issue, in both Claws and LibreOffice Calc, I can't remember exactly how I solved them.

I'm on Xfce, not Cinnamon, so that may make a difference. You might want to try different themes (I use a dark theme, Mint-Y-Dark). Here are a couple other leads for you:

Try, in the Claws menu, Configuration | Preferences | Display | Colors (or Themes)

Also, I found in the Claws Manual (pdf) this info:

Hidden preferences
There are a number of hidden preferences in Claws Mail, preferences that some users who we wanted to please couldn’t live without, but which did not have a place in the GUI in our opinion. You can find the following, and change them while Claws Mail is not running, in ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc. There’s a small tool written in Perl-GTK called Clawsker which provides a user- friendly GUI for tweaking these settings instead of direct editing of clawsrc. You can read more about it on the Clawsker page, https://www.claws-mail.org/clawsker.php.

I do have a note in my system that I did solve the Claws dark theme issue using this config file. Check out the user manual (found at claws-mail.org) for color setting parameters that may be worth tweaking. Also, note that while there may be dark theme options at the OS level, there may be dark theme options at the application or program level too, and you may need to set both.

HTH

[davearn]

Thanks for the tips.

I had previously looked at ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc and couldn't see anything that looked relevant. I also looked at the Claws menu, Configuration | Preferences | Display | Colors - non of those had any effect for this problem. I haven't really looked at alternative themes yet so will look into that.

I will also look at clawsker.php and report back if I find anything helpful.

[davearn]

I have looked at Claws themes and tried a couple: A_Ducks_Claw and Blaue_Klaue - both change the icons but not the selected line colour.

I have installed clawsker.php. It doesn't seem to have a relevant option.
tried changing a couple of colors: Message View, X-Mailer header and Compose window, Default headers text but did see any effect. However I am not sure where to look for their effects. For instance after I had applied a light blue to Default headers the headers in a new email (ie compose window) just stayed black as before. I am not really sure what is meant by 'Default' headers so maybe I was looking for a change in colour in the wrong place.

I was just trying to get some color change somewhere since, as I said, I couldn't see any option that might be relevant to my problem.

So, so far no progress to solving the problem.

From the Cinnamon menu under Preferences:

I tried the Qt5 configuration tool - that didn't seem to have a relevant option.

But then success!

I tried changing themes and when I changed the Controls theme it did effect the selected line background colour!

I will now have to work out (trial and error?) if there is a theme that gives me a suitable contrast for selected lines and is acceptable in its other effects.

It would be interesting to hear from someone if one can change the selected line background colour in a chosen theme keeping the rest of the theme unchanged.

[davearn]

I spoke a little too fast!

The above checks were all done on my desktop computer (linux mint 20.3/Cinnamon 5.2.7)
When I went to my wife's laptop (Linux Mint 21.1 Vera Cinnamon 5.6. I found that the Cinnamon main menu Preferences | Themes
only had (in order) Mouse; Applications; Icons; Desktop whereas on my system I had Window borders; Icons; Controls; Mouse pointer; Desktop and it was the 'Controls' option that changed the colour. My usual Controls theme was Mint-Y (hence the green of selected lines) and changing that to Mint-Y-Red changed to red.
Trying all the offered options (including 'Applications') on the laptop didn't seem to change the selected line colour.

When I came back to check things and writing up this post I found that using the 'Applications' option did change the colour!
However between times I had updated the laptop (with the update manager) and maybe that had changed things.

I checked a couple of programs: claws-mail; nemo and Xreader. They all changed their selected lines color to the new color - sometimes immediately, sometimes only after getting the focus and once one needed to be restarted.

In all cases the selected line background color changed but the text colour of that line didn't.
Unfortunately that still leaves a problem on my wife's system. On my system the claws-mail selected line text is white (unselected lines have black text) which contrasts well with most themes selected line background colours. On the other hand on my wife's system, while nemo and Xreader has white text for selected lines, claws-mail has black text for both selected lines and unselected lines. Black text is almost unreadable on top of the background colours for selected lines with most themes. Luckily the lighter ones (eg Mint-Y-Teal) are just usable on her screen.

So now the search is for a method of changing the text colour of selected lines (ie messages or folders) in claws-mail 4.0.0.
I cannot see anything in clawsker that would be applicable.
I have compared my wife's ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc with mine and although there are a lot of differences I cannot find a color option that might fit - either by values or by the name.

Anyone know how to change the selected line text colour in claws-mail 4.0.0?

Thanks.

[seagull]

I too have wasted untold hours on this situation as I'm sure have many others.
It makes Claws a real PITA to use when you can't read the very text that you want.

It is exactly as you describe.

I've searched everywhere over recent months & I'm very close to giving up on Claws.

[SilenceIsG0lden]

Maybe I never realized this problem exists because I picked a theme before I installed claws on my new 21.1 desktop. Here's how mine looks; I really am quite fond of it! And it's very legible.