Text color used in bottom of Find dialog box makes text almost impossible to read when using a dark theme/mode

[Gitoffthelawn]

Description of the Issue

After performing the Count action in the Find dialog box, the results of the action are displayed in the bottom row of the Find dialog box. The foreground color used for that text makes the text almost impossible to read when using a dark theme in Windows.

Steps to Reproduce the Issue

1. Create a dark theme in Windows
2. Open a text file in Notepad++
3. Open Notepad++'s Find dialog box
4. Perform a Count operation for any string in the file opened in Step 2
5. Notice that the Count results are almost impossible to read at the bottom of the Find dialog box

Expected Behavior

Be able to read all text in Notepad++ UI.

Actual Behavior

Some of the text in the Notepad++ UI is almost impossible to read.

Debug Information

Notepad++ v7.9.1 (32-bit)
Build time : Nov 2 2020 - 01:03:56
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : ON
OS Name : Windows 7 (64-bit)
OS Build : 7601.0

Additional Information

Here is a screenshot:

• The first question is: From where does Notepad++ get this dark blue color? It is not a color specified in the dark OS theme. I'm very interested in the answer to this question, as there are a few other applications that seem to use this same color.
• The next question is: Can Notepad++ simply employ a user-defined color for this text?

[chcg]

Colour values seem to be hardcoded here:

notepad-plus-plus/PowerEditor/src/ScitillaComponent/FindReplaceDlg.cpp

Lines 3357 to 3372 in 8f38707

	if (_statusbarFindStatus == FSNotFound)
	{
	fgColor = RGB(0xFF, 00, 00); // red
	}
	else if (_statusbarFindStatus == FSMessage)
	{
	fgColor = RGB(0, 0, 0xFF); // blue
	}
	else if (_statusbarFindStatus == FSTopReached || _statusbarFindStatus == FSEndReached)
	{
	fgColor = RGB(0, 166, 0); // green
	}
	else if (_statusbarFindStatus == FSNoMessage)
	{
	ptStr = TEXT("");
	}

[sasumner]

See #5087

[Gitoffthelawn]

@chcg Good find! Thanks! Hardcoded values... ugh! Instead of hardcoding those values would it be fairly easy to load them from a settings file?

In the short-term, the colors could be set from values manually assigned in config.xml or the current Notepad++ theme file, and in the long-term, 3 input fields could be added to the Preferences dialog box to allow the user to change them.

What do you think?

[adzm]

How are you creating a dark theme for the win32 components in the first place? This is a uxtheme, right? I recall some hacks to do this a long while ago, but not sure how that works now.

[Gitoffthelawn]

@adzm I create my own .theme files for Windows (ironically, in Notepad+++). If you don't have anything set up to use a standard Windows .theme file, this will do it:

%SystemRoot%\system32\rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL %SystemRoot%\system32\desk.cpl desk,@Themes /Action:OpenTheme /file:"%1"

[pryrt]

According to Community Forum post "How to change the color...of the notification in the search box", 4 years later, users are still asking for this feature.

Please note: there are 3 colors for that status line -- failed search (red), successful count or mark (blue), and successful-search-wraps-around (green). It would be nice if all three of those colors were customizable. (Or possibly if the blue and green were merged so there's only "success" and "failure" colors.)

And it would make sense if the "failure" color was defined by the Preferences > Dark Mode > Tones > Error, and "success" was defined by a new color (or two) in that list of Tones. (Or alternately, if those two or three colors were defined in the Preferences > Searching.)