Guake: Inactive menus in Dwarf Fortress are invisible in ncurses mode

[Edojp]

Describe the bug
Non-active menu items blend into the background when launching Dwarf Fortress in ncurses mode (PRINT_MODE:TEXT). I have tried several different terminal emulators (such as konsole, xfce4-terminal) and only Guake has this issue. I have tried several different color schemes including manually tweaking individual colors but it does not make a difference. Have also tried changing the font.

Expected behavior

Inactive menu items should be visible in a different color.

Actual behavior

Inactive menu items are invisible.

To Reproduce

Run Dwarf Fortress and set PRINT_MODE:TEXT in ~/.dwarffortress/data/init/init.txt

---

Please run $ guake --support, and paste the results here.

$ guake --support

Guake Version: 3.6.3

Vte Version: 0.58.3

Vte Runtime Version: 0.58.3

---

GTK+ Version: 3.24.14

GDK Backend: GdkX11.X11Display

---

Desktop Session: None

---

Display: :0

RGBA visual: True

Composited: True

• Monitor: 0 - SHP eDP1
  
  
  
  • Geometry: 1920 x 1080 at 0, 0
  
  
  • Size: 290 x 170 mm²
  
  
  • Primary: True
  
  
  • Refresh rate: 59.93 Hz
  
  
  • Subpixel layout: unknown
  
  

[Edojp]

Side by side pic displaying the issue here. Left is Guake, right is xfce4-terminal:

[egmontkob]

Does enabling "Preferences -> Appearance -> Bold text is also bright" fix this?

Or do you have a "Color palette" (on that same page) where the two rows of colors are identical? Guake offers quite a few such palettes.

[Edojp]

Gah - bold text option did indeed fix, that was the probably the only option I didn't try... sigh. Thanks so much!

[egmontkob]

only Guake has this issue

More terminals have this issue, e.g. GNOME Terminal's latest versions, many other VTE-based terminals, Kitty, Alacritty.

Please report the problem to Dwarf Fortress's developers, point them to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762247, especially comments 29-31. They can and should fix this so that it works in all the terminals, without users having to set a particular setting.

[egmontkob]

FYI: Same problem reported for the Alacritty terminal here: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues/3295

[Edojp]

I did raise a bug for this with DF but sadly it has not been looked at for over a year. Will give it another prod!