Author Topic: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)  (Read 4313 times)

jwiede

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The SE color picker (at least on Mac) is among the weakest I've encountered, even more so than the stock Win32 one.  At least the Win32 one allows users to save custom colors.

Look, I'm not looking for some ridiculously-overblown color picker, but at the bare minimum users must have a place to store their own sets of custom colors -- ideally, distinct from the "fixed" system-provided theme colors.  Being able to load/save user custom palette sets to disk (maybe as Kuler/PS palettes?) would also be highly useful.

Without even the ability to persist custom user colors, trying to assign the same color to multiple color-coding elements (f.e. assign the same background and embedded background colors across multiple categories) is painfully manual, requiring remembering the color numbers or writing down colors -- neither remotely acceptable solutions for this day/age.

If you're not willing to code even a (slightly) more capable one, then at least give us the option to disable SE's and have SE use the native system color picker instead.  Forcing us to use a custom picker that's significantly less capable than even most OS-stock ones is pointless and counter-productive.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2017, 10:51:24 PM by jwiede »

Dennis

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2017, 02:05:21 PM »
I will file a feature request to add support for saving user colors to a future release.

Also, since the beta forums typically have a shorter lifespan, feature requests are really more appropriate in the "Features and/or Improvements" forum.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2017, 02:07:55 PM by Dennis »

jwiede

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2017, 08:56:53 PM »
I will file a feature request to add support for saving user colors to a future release.

Also, since the beta forums typically have a shorter lifespan, feature requests are really more appropriate in the "Features and/or Improvements" forum.

Honestly, given this is functionality virtually all OS color pickers, etc. currently support, I consider it more a (design) bug than a FReq.

Graeme

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2017, 12:55:48 AM »
I'm curious to know why you need to change colors often enough for this to be an issue.

jwiede

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2017, 01:55:18 AM »
I'm curious to know why you need to change colors often enough for this to be an issue.

It's not as much about frequency of modification, as it is about retaining consistency across multiple different color categories as part of theme design/editing.  Without the ability to persist colors, the only way to ensure consistent colors across entries is to actually write their values down (which is pretty ridiculous, and error-prone).  Text editor customers generally prefer greater quantity of additional color themes available, so a design choice which explicitly inconveniences color theme creation effectively puts SE at a disadvantage in that regard, regardless of color-editing frequency.

Here's an example:  Try changing a theme's background and embedded-background colors (consistently) for "Documentation Attribute","Documentation Attribute Value", "Documentation Comment", "Documentation Keyword", and "Documentation Punctuation" color entries.  Because there's no common inheritance in sub-category groups like that, all entries have to be manually changed in order to achieve a consistent background & embedded-background appearance.  Because there's no way to store custom colors between color entries, using custom colors for such repeated entries requires some form of "offline" storage for the colors.  At best cut&paste appears to require three separate operations (for R,G, and B), as I wasn't able to drag&drop actual colors onto the color display (also would be useful, but that definitely IS a feature request).

I'd accept a change to have groups of symbol coloring sub-categories inherit their backgrounds/embedded-backgrounds from a common ancestor as an alternative, and believe that's needed long-term regardless, but doing so won't really remove the need for persistent custom color storage. 

There's no shortage of solid arguments for why the ability to persistently store custom colors are useful, and the fact that most OS color pickers support that functionality only further supports that point.  Even text-centric apps like SE, other text editors, word processors, etc. offer multiple UX scenarios where arbitrary, repetitive color selection is needed (as I've shown, w.r.t. SE), so it is simply flawed logic to believe persistent color selections aren't useful in text-based applications. 

BTW, it's also worth noting that SE's color picker provides much poorer UX "accessibility" support than the native macOS color picker, a further demonstration why app developers shouldn't "reinvent the wheel" w.r.t. basic OS services/features unless they are certain they can offer an equal or superior version (or at least offer the native option as a fallback).  I'll report the accessibility issues in a separate bug post.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2017, 02:03:28 AM by jwiede »

Graeme

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2017, 09:40:48 AM »
ok, fair comment.  I don't use many colors and I set them up a long time ago.

Dennis

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Re: B2: Color picker needs spots to persist user custom colors (at least)
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2017, 07:09:28 PM »
Fixed for beta3.

jwiede

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