Fun with colours

Post by **Michael** » Sun Sep 22, 2024 3:07 pm

Those of us with failing eyes have found that a change in colours can reduce eyestrain when working with these logs. Most of you will be familiar with most of these methods, but I include them for completeness. There are four things we can change:

The mouse size and colur;
The colour of the cell focus border;
The fonts; and,
The cell background when we are in edit mode. I.e. typing data in the cell.

1. The mouse size and colour.

I have found it easier to see the mouse on the page when it has a bright colour and is larger. I use the bright pink colour and a size of three. This works against a white background, a dark background and against the faded yellow of our logs. You can set the mouse colour and size using the Windows Settings/Accessibility/Mouse Pointer and Touch. The Windows Settings are accessed by pressing the Windows key or clicking on the icon on your Windows toolbar.

2. The colour of the cell focus border.

The default colour for the border of the active cell has been blue, and there was no way to change that. (The active cell is the one you clicked on.) The problem for people who are colorblind is that they cannot easily see that colour. We made a request to the LibreOffice developers to have this colour made optional. They have done so with LibreOffice version 24.8.2. (They have also changed their method of naming LibreOffice versions. When we started, we were on version 3, and followed updates through version 7. Last year, they changed the version numbering system so the first two digits signify the year, and the next value signifies the month and the final one is whatever, hence 24.8.2, which was released in August 2024.)

I found that a Yellow border works very well. You might find that blue is just fine. If you wish to change the colour, you go to Tools/Options/Application Colors/Spreadsheet Cell Focus. The option is available only in LibreOffice 24.8.2 or later. In the left-hand image you can see how well the cell with the Yellow border stands out. Yellow may not work best for you, but there are lots to choose from.

3. The fonts.
I have found that a Yellow font really reduces my eyestrain. It works well on our logs. I also like to have the text centered at the top of the cell. There are three easy ways to select the areas of the weather blocks and event areas. The first way is to select the areas by dragging your mouse from the top corner of the area to the opposite bottom corner. Then click on the font icon on the toolbar. You can also click at the top corner of your area and, holding down the shift key, you click on the opposite bottom corner. The last way, which I use for the Event areas because they can be so large, is to select the particular Event area in the spreadsheet's name box.

4. The cell background when we are in edit mode.

This is the background colour we see when we are typing into a cell. This colour is the Document Background Color, which is normally white. This background color is the colour you see when there are no background images. The trouble is that it is very difficult to see what you are typing if your font is yellow. We asked the LibreOffice developers to have the cell background be transparent, so we could see the underlying image as we type. They said that would be too difficult, but maybe one day. In the meantime, we asked if the cell background colour could be optional and different than the Document Background Color, but they said they did not want to do that. You can, of course, change the Document Background Color, in the LibreOffice Tools/Options/Applications/Document Background Color. Depending on the colour you choose, this can make the other sheets like the Setup sheet, the WR Plot sheet etc. difficult to read. You can, of course, change back and forth, but it can be a nuisance.

So, to make the change easier, spreadsheets version 3.5.h have a new macro with a softkey Alt-G for backGround colour. This brings up an input box and gives you a choice of 13 colours. Colour 13 is one that you can set using the RGB values on the Setup Sheet. Using those codes allows you to exactly match the background colour of the log. I found the easiest way to get the three RGB values is to get a copy of the screen using the Print Screen keys. I paste that image into Microsoft Paint. Then, select the Eye Dropper tool and click on part of the image with the colour you want. Finally, click on the Colour Wheel, and it will display the RGB values for the colour you selected. You then enter those three values into the cells on the Setup sheet.

The before and after results, when entering a value: