152144 - quoted text color is hard-coded, conflicts with dark color schemes

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1715361

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[K Chayka]

win32 build 2002061408, win98se (Classic)

The color for quoted text in the compose window is apparently now hard-coded as
"blue".  This color does not work with all color schemes (see attached screen
shot).  It must be configurable as a pref.

Comment 1

[K Chayka]

Attachment: screenshot showing unreadable quoted text

Comment 2

[Holger Metzger]

I'd also like to have the color to be freely configurable, via a userContent.css
maybe or even the UI.

Comment 3

[K Chayka]

Current hack in userContent.css:

span[_moz_quote=true] {
color: #ffc !important;
}

The real point here is hard-coding a particular color when it can easily
conflict with other color choices made in Prefs|Appearance|Colors.  If colored
quoting in replies is desired (I really don't care, myself) then the color
choice should be a pref, even if there's no UI for it. 
Prefs|Mail&Newsgroups|Composition would be a logical place, though.

Comment 4

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

-->varada

Comment 5

[Calum Mackay]

Yup, this needs to be configurable; confirmed on Solaris/SPARC.

Many people don't want a special colour for quoted text.

Comment 6

[Aleksey Nogin]

As far as I understand, the new hardcoded color was added in bug 83378, marking
as a dependency.

Comment 7

[varada]

Jennifer could you give your opinions as to where you would like this pref to exist?

Comment 8

[jglick]

If its a visible pref, either in Message Display or Compose (Forwarding and 
Replying) Pref panel would be the right place. Would this control the blue line 
that appears when the user replies to a message w/the quoted text Or the, 
sometimes, blue sometimes grey) line that appears when opening a message 
w/quoted text Or both?

http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/prefs/Preferences.html

Comment 9

[esther]

Just a note: Varada and I have investigated this.  This happens in trunk builds
only not branch. We've seen it on the trunk linux build dated 20020614 too and
both Classic and Modern themes.

Comment 10

[Holger Metzger]

Regarding comment #3:

span[_moz_quote=true] {
color: #ffc !important;
}

Is it also possible to color deeper levels in different colors, like:

> red red red
>> green green green
>>> blue blue blue

Comment 11

[Cynthia Brown]

After some digging, I've found that editing mozilla-install-dir/res/html.css
(wherever that is on your individual system) also works as a post-install hack,
and fixes all profiles at once.  For example, on my Win2k box it's "D:\Program
Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla1.1\res\html.css".  10 seconds with vim (or whatever)
to change "blue" to "inherit" on lines 86 and 90 (in my installation, Moz 1.1)
and you're set, until the next release.

BTW this bug makes all quoted text in themes that use light text + dark
backgrounds unreadable. 

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

taking all of varada's bugs.

Comment 13

[Andrew Schultz]

*** Bug 193893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 159088 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

In the duplicate, bug 152144 comment 13 has an even nicer CSS hack than the one 
in comment 10.
I have to say, I would not characterize this bug as "major" but every time I 
change a severity, someone changes it back.

Comment 16

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 183390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Henry James]

The "even nicer CSS hack" (by me, haha) is not in bug #152144 comment #13 
(which would be this very bug), but the duplicate bug #159088 comment #13.

Comment 18

[Aaron Kaluszka]

See also bug 90315

Comment 19

[Chris Thomas (CTho) [formerly [e-mail] [e-mail]]]

2227           preElement->SetAttribute(NS_LITERAL_STRING("_moz_quote"),
2228                                    NS_LITERAL_STRING("true"));
2229           if (quotesInPre)
2230           {
2231             // set style to not have unwanted vertical margins
2232             preElement->SetAttribute(NS_LITERAL_STRING("style"),
2233                                      NS_LITERAL_STRING("margin: 0 0 0 0px;"));
2234           }
2235           else
2236           {
2237             // turn off wrapping on spans
2238             preElement->SetAttribute(NS_LITERAL_STRING("style"),
2239                                      NS_LITERAL_STRING("white-space: pre;"));
2240           }

Is there a reason the style set on lines 2232/2238 can't also include "color: somethingReadFromAPref", and then remove _moz_quote from html.css?  Keep setting the _moz_quote attribute, since other code depends on it.

Comment 20

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 21

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

Anything to do with color of text or Backgrounds should be in the appearance section of Preferences. Or buyout/license from the fellow That created "QuoteColors" and just have it made part of the UI.