Font colors on Windows vs. Linux

users
#1

I have two laptops running LibreOffice. One is a Sony Vaio with LO 6.0.6.x and Linux Mint 18. The other is a Lenovo with LO 6.0.7.x and Windows 10.

I recently opened an Impress Presentation on my Windows machine to work on. At one point, I wanted to change the color of my font on one of my slides. I went to the font color icon on the toolbar and clicked the down arrow. I immediately noticed that the selection of available colors was different that that available on my Linux computer.

To be more specific, if I click on the font color icon on the Windows computer, I get a selection of available colors arranged in 12 columns by 10 rows. For this example, I am using the colors available in the palette called "standard." The top row shows 12 shades of gray. In the second row, the color choices are "Yellow," "Gold," "Orange," "Brick," "Red," "Magenta," "Purple," "Indigo," "Blue," "Teal," "Green," and "Lime." Then under each color column are boxes called Light <color> or Dark <color> followed by a number. So, for example, if I look at the "Blue" column, the top color is represented simply as "Blue." Below it are color boxes called "Light Blue 4," Light Blue 3," and so on down to "Light Blue 1," then followed by "Dark Blue 1," up to "Dark Blue 4." Each column is similarly arranged under its respective color.

On my Linux computer, the "standard" palette consists of 12 columns by 15 rows of colors. The color row below the row of gray, is represented by the colors, "Yellow," "Orange," "Red," "Pink," "Magenta," "Purple," "Blue," "Sky Blue," "Cyan," "Turquoise," "Green," and "Yellow Green." Then below each main color are boxes ranging from <Color> 1 to <Color> 9 with no light or dark designations.

In short, the "standard" font color palette on LO in Windows is different from the "standard" palette on LO in Linux Mint. Moreover, the color represented as "Blue" on my Windows machine is decidedly different than the color called "Blue" on the Linux machine.

I must say I have been using both computers for over a year now and I often share LO files between the two computers. It was only recently -- in the past week -- that I noticed the difference in standard color palettes. I could have sworn that the two palettes were the same in the past, but I can't think of anything I could have done to cause the Windows LO "standard" color palette to suddenly change.

In an attempt to "fix" things, I downloaded and installed LO 6.3.4.2 to my Windows computer, and also renamed my user profile. Neither had any effect on the way the "standard" font-color is represented.

I know this is longer than anyone would like, but if anyone can confirm similar behavior on their Windows vs. Linux installations of LO, or recommend any action, I would appreciate it.

Virgil

#2

I notice the same thing, but my linux version is 6.3 from the openSUSE
repository and not the LO website and the win 10 install is 6.4 so I
could not say that that hasn't caused the difference. I have noticed the
palettes changing over time and a while back I created my own custom
palette (including company branding colours) so I could have consistency.
steve

#3

I use the Ubuntu O/S; LibreOffice 6.3.5.1 and 6.4.1.1 are from the LO website. In both cases, the standard pallet contains 12 columns and 10 rows.

Dan

#4

I have never had much use for the color palettes other than the occasional use of red for the odd word in Writer. So this thread provoked a bit of curiosity to check on my machines.

My W10 box has LO installed from the LO website - recently updated to 6.3.5.2 and the standard color palette is 12 columns by 10 rows. The drop down lists 8 palettes.

My UbuntuStudio box shows 2 standard palettes (in a drop down list of 9 palettes) :
- one with 12 cols by 14 rows with 7 more colors on the 15th row.
- the other standard palette has 12 cols by 10 rows

For years, I have used the Ubuntu distribution of LO but recently I changed to the PPA which purports to maintain the latest LO stable release. It recently updated my copy to 6.3.5.2.

I imagine the color palette situation on my Ubuntu box reflects the history of my LO installations from Ubuntu over the years. Although I am surprised that two palettes with the same name can exist in the drop down lists.

Philip

#5

It might help to clean the user profile, see https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile. Background to the color palette update can be found here https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/12/30/new-color-palettes-in-libreoffice/ and there https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/04/10/new-standard-color-palette/.

Cheers,
Heiko

PS: Colors are stored as RGB values in documents, there must not be any difference between $FF0000 (Red) on Linux vs. Windows or between different versions.

#6

That was my surprise as well, which prompted my original post. I teach at a local college as well as my church and always use slide presentations for my classes. My Windows box is newer with a nice long battery life for teaching a class without having to plug things in. My Linux laptop is old and tired, so I tend to use the Windows machine more often. However, for a reason I haven't yet figured out, it doesn't work well with my church's Epson projector. The projector keeps resetting itself in the middle of a presentation, so, I still use my Linux computer to show my slide presentations at church.

What this means is that I create and edit my slides on my Windows computer and then transfer them over to the Linux computer for showing in church. Since I can never leave things alone, I am constantly doing final editing on the Linux computer, which is how I discovered the difference in color palettes. I use blue and red font coloring for highlighting and I was surprised to find out that "Blue" on my Windows LO installation is different than "Blue" on my Linux LO installation, and that the "standard" palette on Windows LO doesn't include "Blue 4," which is what I use on Linux LO. The result is that colored text on a slide created in Windows LO is a different shade than colored text on a slide edited in Linux LO.

I have to believe that, having different color resources on the different versions of LO would make life frustrating for people sharing documents between Windows and Linux computers.

Part of me was wondering if this is something dictated at the level of the operating system. However, because I'm constantly searching for different/better solutions, I also use LyX/LaTeX/Beamer and RMarkdown/Slidy to create slide presentations, and I haven't noticed any differences in colors between my Windows and Linux installations of those respective respective systems.

Virgil

#7

Thank you for the suggestion and links. As to the user profile, I did clean it by renaming it before I posted my original message. It had no effect.

The links are informative. They help me understand that this whole color palette issue is a fluid one. I notice, however, that the links discuss color palette changes that were made in the days of LO 4.x and LO 5.x. Both of my installations, whether Windows or Linux, are in the LO 6.x range. For example, according to your links, the standard color palette on my Linux LO 6.0.6 is very similar to that used in LO 4.3 whereas the standard palette used on my Windows LO 6.3.4 is most similar to that used in LO 5.4. I would think that, by now, there would be greater uniformity between the Windows and Linux versions of LO in the same release range.

Virgil

#8

I stand corrected.

I had previously renamed the user profile on my Windows machine, without effect. It never occurred to me to rename the user profile on my Linux machine.

I just went in and renamed the user profile on my Linux machine, and that, in fact, did have the effect of calling up the newer color palette. So now, my Windows and Linux installations of LO have the same "standard" color palette.

My apologies for wasting everybody's time.

Virgil

My apologies for having not tried that earlier. I had always thought that my problem was with my Windows installation

#9

Hi all.
When comparing the palettes can you please advise the top row
description, I find this varies.
i.e. on my linux machine top row is greys graded light to dark, left to
right. Are all your palettes of 12 columns similar colour arrangement.
steve.

#10

Since I started this, let me echo Heiko's reference to this site, https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/04/10/new-standard-color-palette/

In it you will see that color palettes have been evolving over the years with LO. It shows three different palettes that have been used as "standard" in the past five years or so. You'll find yours with gray shaded light to dark from left to right and others with gray shaded dark to light from left to right.

I also learned that the palette that a given LO installation uses is somehow stored in the user profile. By renaming the profile on my older Linux LO installation, it updated my standard palette to match that on my newer Windows LO installation.

That's not necessarily a great solution for me as I now have dozens of Impress presentations with colors that are no longer found on the new standard palette, not to mention that renaming the user profile always results in the loss of other customization.

Virgil

#11

And hence why some time ago I created my own palette so I had
portability and continuity for my document editing.
It particularly hit home for me with diagrams in Draw when I had to edit
the palette file to overwrite the changes.
I now have a default template and another template with all my styles
and my custom palette stored outside my profile so I can quickly restore
these if things change.

steve

#12

I see two possibilities for your experience:
* Your Windows version of LibO is from TDF, but your Linux version is
from a distro. Distro creators have a nasty habit of damaging the
software they include in their distro.
* Either the monitors or the video outputs for either your Windows box
or Linux box are not correctly calibrated.

My recommendation would be to create your own colour palettes, tailored
for your specific use-case. Whenever you update/install LibO, copy your
custom palettes over the default stuff.

jonathon