Black and white ambiences

Question

108

Black and white ambiences

asked 2014-01-08 09:38:37 +0200

lk

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updated 2014-01-13 18:25:44 +0200

chemist
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moderator

http://talk.maemo.org/

I suggested manual ambience colour selection here, as the algorithm fails now and then. Then I came to think, from my experience, the algorithm picks only colours, not black or white or anything within.

For example: There are many pictures which would look very nice as backgrounds but having to select an ambience colour for a BW picture screws it up a bit.

So, side with manual setting, would it be possible to tweak the algorithm to use gray colour theme if the background picture is detected as such? Also not only black-on-white style colours, but white-on-black would look gorgeous (and it could make a nice night ambience, right?)

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Comments

6

I'm definitely for a b/w ambience! I like to have b/w background images as well and now I'm forced to tweak the image hue to some usable colour (since the ambience otherwise defaults to the not-so-pleasant brown). White on black would be brilliant.

ziller ( 2014-01-08 11:45:04 +0200 )edit

3

All those solutions here seem to be kind of complicated to implement. There should be a standard white or standard black ambience available to download. Nothing fancy, just a plein, clear, good design like the Jolla phone itself. Would be perfect with the white TOH !

karlefr ( 2014-01-11 14:46:36 +0200 )edit

1

@karlefr: Yeah, having these work with no extra effort was the point of the question. I'm myself not too fond to these kinda quick 'n' dirty fixes, but it's nice try to help if others like to experiment with them.

lk ( 2014-01-11 16:17:50 +0200 )edit

1

Good question, and sometimes blacks/whites/grays are the mood you are in, so colorful things are not always needed n Ambiances ;)

foss4ever ( 2014-01-11 18:24:43 +0200 )edit

2

I agree that a b/w ambience would be cool, and it could easily be included if you were given a few options for color scheme when creating a new ambience (in reference to my first comment in your question about overriding automatic color selection).

ssahla ( 2014-03-24 22:45:06 +0200 )edit

I'm definitely for a b/w ambience! I like to have b/w background images as well and now I'm forced to tweak the image hue to some usable colour (since the ambience otherwise defaults to the not-so-pleasant brown). White on black would be brilliant.
ziller ( 2014-01-08 11:45:04 +0200 )edit
All those solutions here seem to be kind of complicated to implement. There should be a standard white or standard black ambience available to download. Nothing fancy, just a plein, clear, good design like the Jolla phone itself. Would be perfect with the white TOH !
karlefr ( 2014-01-11 14:46:36 +0200 )edit
@karlefr: Yeah, having these work with no extra effort was the point of the question. I'm myself not too fond to these kinda quick 'n' dirty fixes, but it's nice try to help if others like to experiment with them.
lk ( 2014-01-11 16:17:50 +0200 )edit
Good question, and sometimes blacks/whites/grays are the mood you are in, so colorful things are not always needed n Ambiances ;)
foss4ever ( 2014-01-11 18:24:43 +0200 )edit
I agree that a b/w ambience would be cool, and it could easily be included if you were given a few options for color scheme when creating a new ambience (in reference to my first comment in your question about overriding automatic color selection).
ssahla ( 2014-03-24 22:45:06 +0200 )edit

Answer 1

19

answered 2014-01-08 16:23:39 +0200

thp

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moderator

updated 2015-03-08 21:53:41 +0200

ssahla

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[Edit by @ssahla: gconf has been replaced with dconf, edited commands accordingly]

You can query the current active theme colors with:

dconf dump /desktop/jolla/theme/color/
(was gconftool-2 -R /desktop/jolla/theme/color)

You can then for example set the primary highlight color to white:

dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/highlight "'#ffffff'"
(was gconftool-2 -s /desktop/jolla/theme/color/highlight -t string '#ffffff')

As well as set for example the secondary highlight color to some grey:

dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/secondaryHighlight "'#aaaaaa'"
(was gconftool-2 -s /desktop/jolla/theme/color/secondaryHighlight -t string '#aaaaaa')

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Comments

Can I back this up somewhere so that I can recover the values easily if I change the ambiance? Optionally, can I set these persistent so changing the ambiance won't affect them? The values are not stored for the ambiance that is in use while setting them.

ottulo ( 2014-01-09 15:41:07 +0200 )edit

I've gathered Gconf is not used anymore. How can this be done now?

ssahla ( 2014-09-14 22:18:22 +0200 )edit

1

@ssahla have a look at @rainisto's answer and the following comments.

You can dump all keys with:

dconf dump /

axaq ( 2014-12-30 03:40:21 +0200 )edit

@thp - the command to query current active colours, no longer works using gconftool-s - command not found, etc. Could you please update the command/s?, Thanks.

Spam Hunter ( 2015-01-05 22:20:09 +0200 )edit

1

@Markkyboy, the corresponding commands are:

Query: dconf dump /desktop/jolla/theme/color/

Primary highlight: dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/highlight "'#ffffff'"

Secondary highlight: dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/secondaryHighlight "'#aaaaaa'"

Gathered this from @axaq's comment above and the link provided in it. (Edit: edited the answer)

ssahla ( 2015-03-08 21:47:50 +0200 )edit

Answer 2

10

answered 2014-01-11 12:41:58 +0200

lk

3245 ●27 ●35 ●39

updated 2015-06-01 19:37:47 +0200

@ottulo the easiest answer is probably to put these commands in a shell script and run the script every time you want to get the colours back, something like this:

$ cd
$ nano -w ambiencecolours.sh

and put there what thp suggested earlier, as follows:

#!/bin/sh
dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/highlight "'#ffffff'"
dconf write /desktop/jolla/theme/color/secondaryHighlight "'#aaaaaa'"

Notes: at least for me, nano had a bug with line wrapping, so double-check the final contents of the file. If you don't have nano installed, you can get it with 'pkcon install nano'.

Then, fix file permissions and finally run the script:

$ chmod u+x ./ambiencecolours.sh
$ ./ambiencecolours.sh

When you need to restore the colours, run:

$ cd
$ ./ambiencecolours.sh

This isn't of course very convenient if you change your ambiences a lot, but it's still easier than writing the whole commands again and again every time.

I'm also sure these settings are stored within ambience, but I don't know where and how. Changing those values would mean a permanent change per ambience. Maybe @thp or some other could be able to help...?

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Comments

Not sure has this been linked yet, but here's instructions on how to create your own image with the color theme you wish :) Jolla HowTo: Make your own ambience with greyscale images

mikma ( 2014-01-11 13:05:58 +0200 )edit

1

I just found an interesting xml file in /home/nemo/.gconf/desktop/jolla/theme/color there are the colors stored for the actual loaded theme.

Sailor ( 2014-01-24 00:20:30 +0200 )edit

For nano, use the command line switch -w and it'll handle line breaks properly.

ossi1967 ( 2014-09-08 09:09:01 +0200 )edit

@lk - please update your answer, as gconf is no longer used.

Spam Hunter ( 2015-03-08 21:10:40 +0200 )edit

1

@Markkyboy it took some time but updated now :)

lk ( 2015-06-01 19:38:48 +0200 )edit

Answer 3

9

answered 2014-03-24 21:57:00 +0200

Spam Hunter

11677 ●187 ●289 ●324

updated 2015-10-22 01:13:25 +0200

Okay, I'm no expert here, certainly haven't got my head wrapped round the Sailfish SDK, so the ambience was built on-device. (Guide by Schturman for ambience/rpm packaging found at T.M.O.)

When I had my N9, I was a big fan of Black and White colour scheme, for many reasons, including better battery life!

Here's my take on a 'Black & White ambience', includes the Jolla Ringtone Remix 2014 by Rico Tubbs.

The RPM is available from Openrepos, suitable for both phone and tablet Ambience AllBlack

EDIT* (a new category has opened up in Openrepos, just for 'Ambience and Themes' - thank you Basil!)

image description

Regards,

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Comments

@Markkyboy: Isn't there an error in the color definition? File allblack.ambience:

"primaryColor"              : "#FFFFFFFF",
   "secondaryColor"            : "#FFFFFF99",

I expect it should define RGB colors, i.e. 3 hex digit pairs and not 4 of them.

jgr ( 2014-04-01 09:02:30 +0200 )edit

I'll take your word for that @jgr - all i know is, the ambience works on my Jolla.

I didn't write the scripts, I edited just the hex numbers/letters.

See this article about 8 digit hex color codes;

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/more-resources.html#Color

It seems that the extra set of numbers/letters are to do with transparencies :)

Regards,

Spam Hunter ( 2014-04-03 03:10:40 +0200 )edit

I also noticed this when fiddling with ambienced database. All colors are denoted with 4-digit-hex version where alpha value is the first two digits. Seems that the generated ambience colors are mostly including a little bit of transparency to make them look softer :)

matrixx ( 2014-04-03 09:16:12 +0200 )edit

I do not know, why it would require an alpha channel ... however it seems that Sailfish recognizes whether it is a 6 or 8 digit number and interprets it accordingly: My Ambience with 6 digit colors works correctly. So either seems to be correct (even mixed within one Ambience).

jgr ( 2014-04-03 11:29:17 +0200 )edit

@jgr - The colors can be transparent. For example, the secondary/secondaryhighlight colors seem are semitransparent.

mikelima ( 2014-04-03 13:31:20 +0200 )edit

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