So I've noticed that it is very popular to use colors for speech around here, and while that's all fine and dandy I have this weird color thing where two similar colors blur together for me, making it hard to read. I know there's a custom skin option that includes a 'disable color' option, but using the custom skin makes the rest of the posts strangely colored.

So the question is this, anyone know the settings to either make a custom skin that's identical to the 'black' one just without post colors or how to remove the post colors using something like GreaseMonkey?

In reply to SillySnowFox (msg # 1):

The answer depends on whether you enjoy edit privileges on the messages in question.  If you do (e.g., they were posted by you or you have GM access to the game), editing out the color tags is not a big deal.

Just to demonstrate, I will copy this tagged text from a preview and paste it back into the editor window for this message.  What should happen is that the tagged text will be stripped of its tags before it is pasted the second time...

Pasted from preview:

Just to demonstrate, I will copy this tagged text from a preview and paste it back into the editor window for this message.  What should happen is that the tagged text will be stripped of its tags before it is pasted the second time...

If you're looking for a way to strip them all out, copy/paste from posts in a page to a text editor might do what you want on the client side.

I don't know of a "strip color tags" feature in RPoL.  Maybe one of the wise ones will know?

In the page to create theme, there is an option at the bottom to "Load colours from:". After grabbing one, you can then create your theme with the "Disable colouring in messages" option on, and it should work.

When I find that text is hard to read due to poor contrast, I select it with the mouse so that it turns into white text in a blue background, which is quite readable, in a QBASIC sort of way.

The issue is I tend to check the site on my phone.

Might check to see if your mobile browser of choice (or one available for download) has a "Reader Mode" of some kind available, that could strip out the format and just get you to the text.

Not as elegant as running some sort of custom script to alter the CSS or something, but might be worth a look.

Firefox and it does, but only for some sites. The option doesn't come up here.

Might try a different browser then if you want to explore the option.  Edge for Windows phone 10 offers it for RPoL, so there's likely an option out there that would work for you.

Wow... I'll give this a try as a sandbox experiment.  Thanks for pointing us at this option.

I don't use the option myself, but with its presence, I feel confident to mention my strong preference (it is not mandatory) for color speech when I'm the gm :)

And as a bonus, custom theme aren't replace by the special theme on Christmas and April Fools's Day, so the option will stay on.

If I can ask, why? I honestly don't understand it.

Inclusivity; I don't want to exclude potential players because I want color and they don't.

Well I guess that's one answer. It still dosn't explain why coloring speech is so freaking popular around here. Even to the detriment of using quotes.

   My suspicion would be that it's more noticeable. For people with eye issues (or just reading difficulty in general), it makes it easier to tell what is speech and what isn't. Also, I'm not sure if grammatical rules are the same for everyone (like, quotes - speech - punctuation - quote is how we determine speech in English), so that may have something to do with it as well.

   FWIW, I dislike coloured speech also -- I tend to reserve it for singing (I like Glee games).

There are several threads on the topic, but I believe the prevailing answer is "Because it helps to make speech stand out from the rest of the text". This is especially true when skimming a thread to read an ongoing conversation, so as to easier filter out the non-speech text.

I usually will ask players to pick a color for each of their character(s) dialogue, but still like to see proper punctuation and use of good grammar in the non-dialogue parts of the sentences.  I also assign a color to myself as GM and another for general NPC use.

For me, if characters are interacting in interleaved quotes, the color coding helps me keep straight who is speaking without having to look back at who was quoted.

And... yes, I wear those dratted "try and focus" trifocals, so I get the bit about visual problems.  Big fan of the Ctrl+ key, I am.

Pretty much that: quickly identifying speech and character. And pretty colors in thread :)

I think that I can answer you question about not using quote. They are probably left out because they convey less information (for those who don't mind color) than usual in a color speech. And when writing on rpol, the tags kind of serve as visual delimiter by themselves. Well, it was my reasoning before I realized that I can not relay on color to convey the information...

Checked out the "Disable colouring in messages" checkbox in the custom theme editor (found in User Preferences near the top of the right hand column), and it does what it says.  It does not do anything to the tags that cause text to be displayed in color, it just ignores them site-wide.



To answer the original question:  go ahead and set a theme you want your custom theme to resemble, edit that theme to get your custom theme set up with the colors and effects you want it, click the checkbox for "Disable colouring in messages", then save your new custom theme.  Done.