Background Color Comment Toolbar Icons

[koland]

I recently upgraded Calibre to 3.48 portable. Now when I edit metadata, the toolbar above comments can't be easily distinguished from the actual comments box - both have white backgrounds. I played a bit with my desktop theme, hoping to hit upon the setting that the toolbar is using for icon backgrounds, but was unable to find it.

So, my question is, what setting is needed to get the toolbar backgrounds back some some form of light grey, so they don't blend into the actual comments text?

[kovidgoyal]

There's no setting for that, its just how Qt renders it. If you want generally higher contrast and you are on windows, you can try switching calibre to the "system" theme in Preferences->look & feel

[koland]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

There's no setting for that, its just how Qt renders it. If you want generally higher contrast and you are on windows, you can try switching calibre to the "system" theme in Preferences->look & feel

Yes, Windows.

I changed the setting to System - a restart didn't pick up the system settings, but closing and re-opening did. However, there doesn't appear to be any setting that the toolbar is using to pick a color - which is probably why the background is white.

The only theme/color setting I have as white is the Window setting (background) and selected items (font). Neither has any effect on the toolbar, although I suppose I could change all the window on my system to something other than black on white (which is the best contrast), just to get the comments themselves to change color.

Or, perhaps, a fix or system setting could be found/created in Calibre that sets that background color. It used to be a light grey, which is used for various settings in my theme, probably picked up from the 3D objects background color (which is used by the icons on the main/front page of Calibre). I'd hate to have to go back to 1.16, since I no longer care about being compatible with some older windows laptops I have, but I would like to be able to see where the comments start on the screen.

[kovidgoyal]

There is a frame around the comments, so they are separated from the toolbars. I'm afraid that's as much visual separation as I am willing to implement. Overriding Qt's toolbar rendering is a bridge too far.

[koland]

Guess I'll have to take your word for it. There is definitely no frame on my screen, with system default or Calibre format selected. The entire tab, from above the icons down thru the tab itself is one smooth section of white. If I change to System, then change the window background to something like yellow, then the comments box is clearly visible. I am not, however, willing to change every single program on my system to a non-white background for text, just to get some sort of separation between the two in Calibre.

Perhaps you just left it off in the version I'm running, but there are notes warning not to go past this version with Windows 7, so I haven't upgraded further.

[kovidgoyal]

This is what it looks like in current versions of calibre. Since you are anyway stuck on windows 7 there is nothing that can be done until you are ready to upgrade.

[koland]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This is what it looks like in current versions of calibre. Since you are anyway stuck on windows 7 there is nothing that can be done until you are ready to upgrade.

It isn't a matter of ready - I have W10 on a notebook and desktop across town. But two machines have to stay on W7 for another piece of software. One of those happens to be my main desktop.