[plt-scheme] Setting the text selection color in DrScheme on OS X?

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
> Hi Robby,
>
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Robby Findler
> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
>>> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:02 AM, Richard Cleis <rcleis at mac.com> wrote:
>>>> You can set the Highlight Color in the Appearance part of System
>>>> Preferences.  'Appearance' is the first preference in the System Preferences
>>>> pane.  I made mine somewhat darker, specifically for DrScheme.
>>>
>>> Thanks Richard. The problem I see is that it doesn't change the actual
>>> background color, though. I mean, in the same way that putting cursor
>>> to the left of a parentheses turns it light grey, this highlighting
>>> does not.
>>
>> Hi Grant: many of the colors that drscheme shows you are under the
>> control of DrScheme. For the text selection color, however, DrScheme
>> defers to the OS's color selection. So if you want to use white on
>> black, you should probably also change your selection color in the
>> dialog that Richard mentioned.
>>
>> Does that help?
>
> Yes. Sorry my message was a bit unclear. I wasn't suggesting that
> System Preferences changes the background color of DrScheme.
>
> I did make that change in System Preferences. For example, now I
> changed it to red. In my web browser, which is black on white, when I
> make a selection it is vividly visible. In DrScheme though, which is
> white on black, when I make a selection, the text color of course
> turns red, but the background does not, it remains totally black. This
> is different from how it works on Windows where it would not be black,
> it would be red.
>
> Looking at the DrScheme preferences, when the background color is
> black and the brightness is 0%, I get these results. When I change it
> to black with 4% brightness, then I can see that a selection has been
> made because the background changes (it is almost blackish, tinted
> red).
>
> I can post a screenshot if my description is not good.

I think that this is just how the selection works under mac os x. I
think it is difficult to pick a single color that looks good on a
white background and on a black one.

Probably the best thing to do would be to have a mode where DrScheme
doesn't defer to the OS for the selection and then use that in
white-on-black mode. Probably that'll have to wait for a future
release, tho. There are plans in store for some work on the low-level
GUI layer in DrScheme (aka MrEd) but they may be a while in coming.

Robby