Proper selection coloring in JFace Structured Viewers by Christopher-Hermann · Pull Request #3659 · eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform.ui

Christopher-Hermann · 2026-01-12T08:01:03Z

Resumption of #1690

Highlighting problem when using the dark theme on Windows eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform.swt#811

JFace viewer are using OS selection color to highlight the selected item. On some OS this is not accessible. In particular when the eclipse is used with dark theme and the OS is used with light theme, this can cause really bad UI/UX experience. With this change, the selection color can be changed via color preference in the settings of eclipse.

Example
Selection color on Windows Server in dark theme looks really bad:

Testing
On start up of eclipse, the selection colors in column viewers (table and tree viewer) should look like before.
On Windows, the dark theme should predefine the selection colors to fix the bad coloring on some Windows platforms.

In the preferences (Preferences > General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts), there are 4 new properties for the coloring of the viewer selection:

Basic > Viewer selection background (focused)
Basic > Viewer selection background (no focus)
Basic > Viewer selection foreground (focused)
Basic > Viewer selection foreground (no focus)
Changing these colors should affect the coloring of the selection in viewers. The coloring should immediately be applied as soon as the apply button is confirmed. The reset button should reset the coloring to the OS specific highlight coloring, expect for Windows dark theme, where the predefined colors should be restored.

OS Information
The fix is implemented for Windows and Mac only (no GTK).
On GTK the coloring via SWT.EaraseItem is not working properly.

Fixes:
eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform.swt#811
#1688
#1956
#2780
#3570

See:
#1690
#2793

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java

eclipse-platform-bot · 2026-01-12T08:08:00Z

This pull request changes some projects for the first time in this development cycle.
Therefore the following files need a version increment:

bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

An additional commit containing all the necessary changes was pushed to the top of this PR's branch. To obtain these changes (for example if you want to push more changes) either fetch from your fork or apply the git patch.

Git patch

From 8173e816f6da09758c63518dfb33b1ddc32c3725 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eclipse Platform Bot <platform-bot@eclipse.org>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:32:13 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Version bump(s) for 4.40 stream


diff --git a/bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF b/bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
index 5852190824..74f698f50f 100644
--- a/bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
+++ b/bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Manifest-Version: 1.0
 Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
 Bundle-Name: %pluginName
 Bundle-SymbolicName: org.eclipse.jface.text
-Bundle-Version: 3.30.0.qualifier
+Bundle-Version: 3.30.100.qualifier
 Bundle-Vendor: %providerName
 Bundle-Localization: plugin
 Export-Package: 
diff --git a/bundles/org.eclipse.jface/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF b/bundles/org.eclipse.jface/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
index 0a2620fd71..a28edbfee3 100644
--- a/bundles/org.eclipse.jface/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
+++ b/bundles/org.eclipse.jface/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Manifest-Version: 1.0
 Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
 Bundle-Name: %pluginName
 Bundle-SymbolicName: org.eclipse.jface;singleton:=true
-Bundle-Version: 3.39.0.qualifier
+Bundle-Version: 3.39.100.qualifier
 Bundle-Vendor: %providerName
 Bundle-Localization: plugin
 Export-Package: org.eclipse.jface,
-- 
2.53.0

Further information are available in Common Build Issues - Missing version increments.

github-actions · 2026-01-12T08:08:06Z

Test Results

1 993 files - 1 022 1 993 suites - 1 022 1h 20m 8s ⏱️ - 44m 5s
8 234 tests ± 0 7 980 ✅ - 5 253 💤 + 5 1 ❌ ±0
15 553 runs - 7 947 15 010 ✅ - 7 701 542 💤 - 246 1 ❌ ±0

For more details on these failures, see this check.

Results for commit 4bac0c4. ± Comparison against base commit e6d3cbf.

This pull request skips 5 tests.

AllTests AllResourcesTests FontRegistryTest ‑ multipleDisplayDispose
AllUnitTests TestUnitWinRegistry ‑ testWinRegistry
JFaceTextTestSuite ContextInformationTest ‑ testContextInfo_hide_focusOut
UiTestSuite ApiTestSuite WorkbenchPluginTest ‑ testGetImageRegistryFromAdditionalDisplay
org.eclipse.urischeme.internal.registration.TestUnitWinRegistry ‑ testWinRegistry

♻️ This comment has been updated with latest results.

laeubi · 2026-01-12T08:08:16Z

@Christopher-Hermann please use descriptive title and PR description and also adapt the commit message. It is impossible to understand without looking at the code what is actually done here.

Beside that, its always good to show before/after screenshot for visual changes.

Christopher-Hermann · 2026-01-12T08:23:05Z

Added PR title & description. In the current state there are most probably some things left that needs to be cleaned up, tests are missing, etc.

But in the first place I wanted to share the coding with @fedejeanne to get the fix running on all operating systems.
In the last try there were a lot of issue especially for Linux that we need to solve...

fedejeanne · 2026-01-13T13:07:22Z

@Christopher-Hermann thank you for retrying this!

As agreed, I tested on Linux and I found some of the problems that were already mentioned in #1956, namely:

The Viewer selection foreground (no focus) does not apply in the package explorer (MANIFEST.MF) and in the Preferences (Colors and Fonts item)

This situation is worse with the default values since it's then white over white for non-focused elements (MANIFEST.MF in the package explorer)

Icons go missing, both for the focused (orange) and the non-focused (light blue) elements

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java

...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/StructuredViewer.java

fedejeanne

@Christopher-Hermann I now have some other odd behavior: I see half painted selections :-\

EDIT: I see the icons though, so that's good :-)

Here I changed the Viewer selection background (focused) from orange to green and Viewer selection background (no focus) to yellow and you can see that the selections still have a half-orange part, both the focused and the non-focused ones.

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java

Christopher-Hermann · 2026-01-28T07:56:29Z

I tried a lot on a Linux VM and followed the Eclipse article where the SWT.EaraseItem is described as: "SWT.EraseItem: allows a client to custom draw a cell’s background and/or selection, and to influence whether the cell’s foreground should be drawn"
But this does not appear to work correctly on Linux (GTK) environments. This leads me to believe there might be a bug in its implementation for this platform.

I’ve implemented a fix/option that influences selection colors, but explicitly only for Windows and macOS, effectively skipping GTK.
I know this is not nice, but according to the amount of issues (all on windows) I guess this solution is better than doing nothing.

Any opinions?

fedejeanne · 2026-02-02T09:26:31Z

@Christopher-Hermann thank you for looking into it and for going into so much trouble for Linux too! I have to say my opinion is somewhat partial since I only develop on Eclipse on Linux in my own free time (we use Windows at work, where my colleagues periodically remind me about this very annoying issue). That being said: I'd be OK to compromise and skip this feature for Linux.

Maybe @akurtakov / @jonahgraham / @iloveeclipse can chip in here since they work on Linux?

@Christopher-Hermann in case your proposal is accepted and you deliver the functionality for Windows and Mac only, you would have to remove the new properties under General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts for Linux though since they don't apply

Christopher-Hermann · 2026-02-06T07:27:32Z

@Christopher-Hermann in case your proposal is accepted and you deliver the functionality for Windows and Mac only, you would have to remove the new properties under General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts for Linux though since they don't apply

I tried to do this, but I didn't find a way to define a color definition only for Windows and Mac, or to hide it on Linux. So if someone has an idea how this could be done please let me know.

Copilot

Pull request overview

This PR adds configurable selection foreground/background colors (focused + no focus) for JFace structured viewers to improve accessibility/contrast, especially in dark theme scenarios on Windows/macOS.

Changes:

Introduces 4 new color definitions exposed in Colors and Fonts preferences for viewer selection coloring.
Adds a JFace EraseItem listener to StructuredViewer to apply the configured selection colors (except on GTK).
Updates dark theme defaults to improve unfocused selection contrast.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 8 changed files in this pull request and generated 8 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
bundles/org.eclipse.ui/plugin.xml	Adds new color definitions for viewer selection colors backed by a colorFactory.
bundles/org.eclipse.ui/plugin.properties	Adds labels/descriptions for the new color definitions.
bundles/org.eclipse.ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java	Provides OS-derived default RGBs for the new color definitions.
bundles/org.eclipse.ui.themes/css/dark/e4-dark_preferencestyle.css	Sets dark theme defaults for unfocused viewer selection colors.
bundles/org.eclipse.ui.themes/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF	Version bump for the themes bundle.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/StructuredViewer.java	Registers the new selection-color listener for structured viewers.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java	Implements selection drawing logic using themed colors and fallbacks.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/src/org/eclipse/jface/internal/text/TableOwnerDrawSupport.java	Uses the new selection drawing helper for owner-drawn tables (content assist).

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/src/org/eclipse/jface/internal/text/TableOwnerDrawSupport.java:160

In the selected-item path, this method changes the GC colors via drawSelection(event) but never restores oldForeground/oldBackground afterwards. Since SWT reuses the same GC for subsequent painting, this can leak selection colors into later drawing; restore the original GC colors at the end (similar to the non-selected branch).

		// Remember colors to restore the GC later
		Color oldForeground= gc.getForeground();
		Color oldBackground= gc.getBackground();

		if (isSelected) {
			ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.drawSelection(event);
		} else {
			Color foreground= item.getForeground(index);
			gc.setForeground(foreground);

			Color background= item.getBackground(index);
			gc.setBackground(background);
		}

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Copilot · 2026-02-24T11:47:22Z

...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java

+
+	@Override
+	public RGB createColor() {
+		Display display = Display.getDefault();


Other theme color factories in this package use Display.getCurrent() (and assume UI thread). Using Display.getDefault() here can create/access a Display from the wrong thread and is inconsistent with the established pattern; prefer Display.getCurrent() (with a safe fallback if needed).

Suggested change

Display display = Display.getDefault();

Display display = Display.getCurrent();

if (display == null) {

display = Display.getDefault();

}

I'd be fine with using getCurrent() too. WDYT @Christopher-Hermann ?

...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java

bundles/org.eclipse.ui/plugin.properties

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java

bundles/org.eclipse.jface.text/src/org/eclipse/jface/internal/text/TableOwnerDrawSupport.java

When opening the completion proposals via the keyboard, the focus will stay in the editor to be able to accept further user input. This is causing the completion proposal to be drawn in non focus colors. This colors can lead to UX problems, especially in dark theme. With this fix, the completion proposals are always drawn in focused colors. Fixes eclipse-platform#1688

Christopher-Hermann · 2026-02-27T08:25:36Z

I'm looking into this again and trying to find the cause for the misbehavior in Linux, no luck.

I do have some minor comments regarding the writing style though.

Thanks for checking it again and for your comments. I did not have time to look into it yet, hopefully I find some time the next days 👍

They will be handled via the CompletionProposalDrawSupport

No need for parameters

In order to avoid code duplication. Also add small JavaDoc

This way I can reduce the visibility of the constructor in TableOwnerDrawSupport to default and avoid exposing more (internal) API surface than strictly necessary.

The method is not used anymore and the listener has been replaced by CompletionProposalDrawSupport, which adds its own functionality and then delegates to TableOwnerDrawSupport.

And also add JavaDocs to them instead of documenting the private method.

Use it in ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener instead of duplicating it.

Erasing only needs to prepare the background so the foreground color has nothing to do with it. It is during the painting phase that the text (and also the icons) are drawn so setting the foreground color needs to be done only in the method handlePaintItem.

fedejeanne · 2026-02-27T21:21:06Z

Aside from the failing checks, this PR is ready to be reviewed.

@Christopher-Hermann I made lots of changes that still need to be squashed. I thought it would be easier for you to review if there are several smaller, more descriptive, changes than only 1 big commit. I tried it on Windows and Linux and it works better than before, at least no icons go missing in Linux.

There is still one thing that doesn't really work as I expect it to: the foreground color in the preferences does not affect views like the package explorer, the outline, (quick) hierarchy view and others. It also doesn't affect lists inside the manifest editor. For what I saw, it only affects the code-completion popup, which is achieved by CompletionProposalDrawSupport (adapted from #2793). Do you have any idea where could we tweak the code so the missing places also honor the foreground color set in the preferences?

Christopher-Hermann

With the current state it breaks the Abstract Syntax Tree:

Left side without the change, right side with the change (same type is selected)
To retest you can run the command Show in (Abstract Syntax Tree)

Next finding:
Foreground colors are not considered anymore on macOS:

I'm not sure how we can proceed here, I already spend a lot of time into this topic and it feels like there is no proper solution working on all platforms for this problem :(

...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java

@Christopher-Hermann

Removing the bit is necessary so that Linux and Mac do not overwrite the background color later. This was noticed by @Christopher-Hermann during a review and the problem showed up in the AST view.

Christopher-Hermann marked this pull request as draft January 12, 2026 08:01

Christopher-Hermann changed the title ~~Selection coloring~~ [WIP] Selection coloring Jan 12, 2026

merks reviewed Jan 12, 2026

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bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

Christopher-Hermann changed the title ~~[WIP] Selection coloring~~ [WIP] Proper selection coloring in JFace Structured Viewers Jan 12, 2026

Christopher-Hermann force-pushed the selection_coloring branch 2 times, most recently from db2a1ad to d173442 Compare January 12, 2026 08:35

Copilot AI mentioned this pull request Jan 12, 2026

Add draft PR guidelines to CONTRIBUTING.md laeubi/.github-eclipse-platform#1

Merged

laeubi mentioned this pull request Jan 12, 2026

Add draft PR guidelines to CONTRIBUTING.md eclipse-platform/.github#260

Merged

fedejeanne reviewed Jan 13, 2026

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bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java Show resolved Hide resolved

fedejeanne reviewed Jan 13, 2026

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...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

fedejeanne reviewed Jan 13, 2026

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bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/StructuredViewer.java Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

fedejeanne reviewed Jan 15, 2026

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Andr2ea mentioned this pull request Jan 23, 2026

Windows 11 - Selected Toolbar Icons look light (bad) in the dark theme eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform.swt#217

Open

Christopher-Hermann force-pushed the selection_coloring branch from 606ad8c to 29bf05a Compare January 27, 2026 19:29

eclipse-platform-bot and others added 2 commits January 28, 2026 08:48

Version bump(s) for 4.39 stream

314a045

Handle viewer selection color

c2654d1

Christopher-Hermann force-pushed the selection_coloring branch from 29bf05a to c2654d1 Compare January 28, 2026 07:48

Christopher-Hermann marked this pull request as ready for review January 28, 2026 07:49

Christopher-Hermann changed the title ~~[WIP] Proper selection coloring in JFace Structured Viewers~~ Proper selection coloring in JFace Structured Viewers Jan 28, 2026

fedejeanne requested a review from Copilot February 24, 2026 11:40

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of fedejeanne February 24, 2026 11:41 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Feb 24, 2026

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fedejeanne added 5 commits February 25, 2026 16:06

Refactor a bit, make the code more compact

abe68b1

Fix hasAdditionalEraseItemListeners: let it skip previous listeners

339d07c

Fill only part of the rectangle to help debugging

27abb7c

Repaint the image manually (fix for Linux)

9b24f71

Make constructor private

d688d34

fedejeanne mentioned this pull request Feb 27, 2026

Draw completion proposals always as focused #2793

Draft

fedejeanne and others added 18 commits February 27, 2026 09:31

Undo some changes in TableOwnerDrawSupport

095c986

They will be handled via the CompletionProposalDrawSupport

Move stuff around

ada2dc8

Use the id the match the colors in the color factory

b921c1a

No need for parameters

Adapt some comments and remove FQN (use import)

1ca6ba6

Rename method to "install" to match similar methods in other listeners

b268373

Move method up

81f9cd0

Extract private method

0838f15

Use private method in ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener

172eb01

In order to avoid code duplication. Also add small JavaDoc

Move CompletionDrawSupport to parent package.

28563b5

This way I can reduce the visibility of the constructor in TableOwnerDrawSupport to default and avoid exposing more (internal) API surface than strictly necessary.

Remove the install method from TableOwnerDrawSupport

521271e

The method is not used anymore and the listener has been replaced by CompletionProposalDrawSupport, which adds its own functionality and then delegates to TableOwnerDrawSupport.

Rename public methods in ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener

ef799cc

And also add JavaDocs to them instead of documenting the private method.

Make constant in OwnerDrawLabelProvider more visible and use it

632a201

Use it in ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener instead of duplicating it.

Rename private method in ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener

0ec8982

Use method getSelectionForegroundColor to avoid code duplication

d409d11

Version bump(s) for 4.40 stream

27357b4

Bump minor version of org.eclipse.jface

da2d6fd

Bump version in @SInCE

8763def

Christopher-Hermann commented Mar 2, 2026

View reviewed changes

...ui.workbench/eclipseui/org/eclipse/ui/internal/themes/ColumnViewerSelectionColorFactory.java Show resolved Hide resolved

bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/ColumnViewerSelectionColorListener.java Show resolved Hide resolved

Also remove SWT.BACKGROUND when handling SWT.EraseItem

4bac0c4

Removing the bit is necessary so that Linux and Mac do not overwrite the background color later. This was noticed by @Christopher-Hermann during a review and the problem showed up in the AST view.

fedejeanne force-pushed the selection_coloring branch from 2f682b0 to 4bac0c4 Compare March 2, 2026 14:49

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