Dark themes don't work well with highlighted current line in gedit

[Paul White]

In order to checkout out an old bug report I started gedit, enabled "Highlight current line" and changed the application theme to "Yaru-dark" The current line is highlighted correctly but the text is unreadable because it is too light. The text needs to be much darker.

This is not a theme that I would normally use so I'm not too bothered about how the problem is fixed but this configuration makes gedit very difficult to use as you can't actually see the text that you're adding, changing or deleting.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: yaru-theme-gtk 19.10.4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-24.26-generic 5.3.10
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu15
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Sat Dec 21 16:33:03 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-05-17 (218 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Alpha amd64 (20190517)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: yaru-theme
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2019-11-08 (42 days ago)

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtksourceview/issues/29
seems related as subsequent testing shows other dark themes
affect gedit's usability when the current line is
set to be highlighted.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Joe Barnett (thejoe)]

Interesting that I didn't see this in eoan, but did once upgrading to focal. appears the "Highlight current line" option default changed to true maybe?

[Lee Clark (lclark125)]

The same issue happens with other applications too. It's not just gedit.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Which other applications?

[Lee Clark (lclark125)]

I've attached a screen shot from a program called Ghidra. It is a Java application and so it may be that it is a different issue. But it is using the GTK theme and the colours look the same as gedit.

[Carlo Lobrano (c-lobrano)]

Is the problem reproducible with adwaita-dark?

[Lee Clark (lclark125)]

Yes, just tested both applications with Adwaita-dark.

[Lee Clark (lclark125)]

Both applications are fine with standard Yaru and Adwaita.

[Carlo Lobrano (c-lobrano)]

As reported in the upstream ticket, the "Classic" gedit colorscheme does not fit well with dark theme, both Yaru and Adwaita, but there are others to choose.

[Coci Web (cociweb)]

Really old bug, and misleading descriptions/comments.
The issue has a solution under a correct bug description:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtksourceview4/+bug/1887311

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Coci,

9 months is not old. And you should be able to change the title/description of this bug if you can think of something better.

[Eduardo (eltimbol)]

My apologies. I haven't been keeping up with my email and I just saw the comments. Please close this bug report if there are existing solutions for this one. I don't want to take up more of your time. As mentioned by c-lobrano, I just changed the Gedit theme to another one. It's a workaround, but it works well enough.

[Lin Manfu (linmanfu)]

The solution in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtksourceview4/+bug/1887311 also works for me. Could this please be changed in Ubuntu?

[Frederik Feichtmeier (feichtmeier)]

Fixed with https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/pull/2546

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. The fix is not in Ubuntu yet, so not "released".

[Allie Campbell (64bitamoeba)]

Good evening! Does anyone know when a fix might be pushed to Ubuntu? And if it would come to LTS? Thanks.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Looks like the fix is in 21.04 now. Not sure about the plan for LTS.

[Allie Campbell (64bitamoeba)]

Thank you :)

[Craig McQueen (cmcqueen1975)]

What does it take to get bugs fixed in LTS?

[Phoenix Gabriel (m-ubunau-0)]

I'm on 22.04 and still experiencing this bug. I thought this was fixed in 21.04? What happened?

[Coci Web (cociweb)]

#14 Is two initial LTS release enough long? (still not backported to 20.04) and also not corrected in 22.04 and in 22.04.1 as well. c'mon it's just a hex number in an xml file... Please, LTS means Long Term Support and not Long Term sh!t.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The Yaru team would be unaware of this bug because it is still closed for the Yaru project. I'll reopen it now, but someone please also report the issue to the Yaru design team at https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/issues and then mention the new issue ID here.

[Jan Schürmann (visionfactory.net)]

Its still a bug in 22.04.

as a normal user i can change the highlight active line setting as a "workaround" but that is not possible if gedit is started as root.

[Coci Web (cociweb)]

Daniel, Could you please link the reopened Yaru team issue?
Reopened the case for the Yaru Design team: https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/issues/2090

[Coci Web (cociweb)]

According to the ticket in #27 please try to change the color schema in the preferences->Fonts&Colors.
https://help.gnome.org/users/gedit/stable/gedit-change-color-scheme.html.en
Gedit can has a different schema than the system...
AND if you upgraded from previous version, you can easily inherit the old classic schema.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Emilien Klein (emilien-klein)]

I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 (the light version, with few pre-installed programs), during installation I selected Dark Theme, then installed gedit with APT.
Same screenshots as visible https://askubuntu.com/questions/1230173/selected-lines-contents-arent-readable-in-gedit-while-using-dark-theme-on-ubun

Gedit is really ununsable in this default configuration, and one should not have to go search for workarounds on the internet to make this basic program work ;)

I "fixed" it by going to Gedit's properties, Fonts and Colors, and changing from the default selected Tango theme to Oblivion. All good now.

[Daniel Tang (daniel-z-tg)]

I "fixed" this problem by switching from gedit to gnome-text-editor. People say it's the successor to gedit and is recommended as the default.