Dithering and text

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  • This is more of a plea to Bangle2 developers to take care when selecting colours to use with text. The limited range of colours and limited resolution make it very easy to end up with almost unreadable text.

    The example below is from the current Messages app (v0.20):

    Dithering example

    On the left is the original, on the right is one I've manually un-dithered.

    The green one didn't really need un-dithering. The dithered background colours are black-green, both of which are different to the white text colour. I also suspect that on the watch the solid green won't be a bright lime-green like it is on the PC, but more of a dark green. In that case the white text will still be quite readable, even if the green was solid.

    The other one is very different. It's trying to be gray, but the black-white dithered background in combination with the white text is making the small text in particular almost impossible to read.

    I'm sort of wondering if it was a mistake to have dithering enabled by default, rather than selectively enabled as required? Dithering works quite well on icons, not so much with text.

  • I'd much rather have the one of the right. Readability has to come before color. Could you do a pull request and see if Gordon will accept it.

  • The other one is very different. It's trying to be gray, but the black-white dithered background in combination with the white text is making the small text in particular almost impossible to read.

    I tend to keep my Bangle on a light theme where it seems this is less of an issue - I hadn't realised the dither was just grey (looks from code the idea was for it to be a lighter green). I've just committed a change now to make that black.

    I have however left the green one - tried it on a watch and it's basically unreadable with the backlight off - the text would have to be flipped to being black.

    I think one issue here really is that the messages app should probably just use the current theme. Then at least you could change all the colors from the settings app without having to change the messages app itselkf

  • should probably just use the current
    theme

    Whilst it looks nice in some contexts, I would agree it would be better to support the selected theme.

  • I agree that using a theme should be the first step. I'll try having a look myself, unless Gordon beats me to it.

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Dithering and text

Posted by Avatar for andrewg_oz @andrewg_oz

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