Please change the color of error output

[jockm]

With my aging eyes that orange color is increasingly hard to read against a black background, and there is no way to change it.

Yes I can copy and paste it into another editor, but that shouldn't be necessary just to see a simple message.

This is bad for accessibility and hard on your users. Please change to something more readable

[tofrnr]

I agree, e.g. light green (lime) would be much more easy to recognize!

[lmihalkovic]

@jockm any thoughts on the colors used in the last screenshot of #3383 would be welcome. the theme works with 1.9.0-beta (just not the highlights)

[jockm]

I like the highlights, I think the comment color is fine, if a little subtle. I think the more traditional soft green would be better.

However the error color is just as bad as it was before

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Anything with a heavy component of red or blue is harder to read. The human eye has the fewest cones (the elements of our eyes that see color) for red, followed by blue, and the most for green.

So that orange — no matter the shade — is taxing to read, even for people with good eyesight. Factor in people with vision disabilities, or even just people getting older; and any shade of orange is going to feel downright hostel

I mean the the app is short on accessibility as it is, every bit helps.

There is exactly nothing wrong with making the error text white. It is completely clear that it is the error text from context; but most text is black on white, or white on black for a reason.

[lmihalkovic]

@jockm thank you for the input. I changed the colors

[jockm]

Here is the thing: the error text is still orange. Aside from tradition there is no good reason for that, and clearly tradition doesn't matter considering the changes you made on the code area.

So please just make the error text white on black, or black on white. The color coding on the file:line part is fine.

Hello, thank you for your input. I have attached a picture with the change in error color from orange to white. If this is what you are asking for, I can make a pull request and see if it gets accepted. I can also show you how to change the color if you are running on command line/ terminal in case it does not get accepted.

[per1234]

I'm very much against changing error text color to white. It's important for errors and warnings to be visually distinct from the rest of the output. I'd hope there could be a compromise that can improve accessibility for people with visual disabilities without greatly worsening the user experience for everyone else.

As Alogitt said, it's quite easy for anyone to customize the Arduino IDE's theme to their individual preference. I have attempted to document all the theme settings, as well as provide a sketch for testing themes here:
https://github.com/per1234/ThemeTest/blob/master/README.md

Seeing as it doesn't satisfy @jockm, I wonder if there is actually a need for #7551? Is there anyone who has trouble seeing the current red color who prefers the orange color used in that PR? I have no strong preference between red and orange.

@per1234 Personally, I believe the bright orange color is a bit easier to see against the black background than the original color while still conveying the warning that it is supposed to. I don't have a strong preference; just trying to help out.

[jockm]

I think the white is perfect.

@per1234 The error text is 100% visually distinct in that screenshot. It is below the orange bar, and has a different background color than the code. It is distinct.

Additionally I concur that there is no need for #7551, if the goal of it is better readability.

[tofrnr]

I disagree about orange or red - both is invisible to me!
Please make it WHITE, YELLOW or LIGHT-GREEN (LIME) !

I agree with jockm ("The error text is 100% visually distinct in that screenshot. It is below the orange bar, and has a different background color than the code. It is distinct.")

Perhaps you can provide a setting in the preferences window about the text color.

IMO a pull request would not help, it must always be in the main branch for std Arduino downloads for all future releases.

[lmihalkovic]

I will switch to white in my own theme.. and leave the highlights the way they are now forgot the colors but they are ... high contrast)

[feikname]

There's an objective way to measure where certain color changes are acceptable such as this tool, which checks for W3C's WCAG 2.0 compliance in the contrast between a background color and a text color.

In the case of PR #7551, the brighter orange (#FF8300) proposed passes in all cases, and the darker orange (#E34C00) doesn't pass the WCAG AAA for normal texts case.

Arduino users have grown to instantly spot orange as error messages, and I think it's appropriate to keep it so as to not break UX and, IMO, it's is the best color for representing errors in a black background after red.

Just please don't make errors green or white, one would be REALLY counter-intuitive and the other, while easy to see once found, blends with all the other output printed in the log, which IIRC is also white.