What would be getDesktopProperty() for Linux?

Question

I have to read the high contrast mode of the native os and have to apply the settings on my product. Now for windows I have done some thing like this:

 try {
       Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
       boolean highContrast = (Boolean)toolkit.getDesktopProperty("win.highContrast.on" );
 }catch(Exception e) {
 }

This works fine for Windows but I need the desktop property to read linux high contrast settings. Can anyone please tell me what would be the desktop property for linux?

I haven't been able to find a high contrast property defined in the documentation online at http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/XSettingsRegistry but you could grab the desktop theme via getDesktopProperty("gnome.Net/ThemeName") and check if the value contains "high contrast" in it. — Joshua, Aug 03 '11 at 00:13
Look at similar question http://stackoverflow.com/q/1062711/891391 — yatul, May 30 '12 at 08:10

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '12 at 08:04

I think there is no good method to check high contrast mode in Linux whenever you using Java or not (X11 itself have no high-contrast feature and Linux have a vast variety of UI frameworks and each of them may implement high contrast in it's own way).

Strictly speaking you'll have a bunch of problems with this in Windows too (see here, or here).

There are two possible options to solve the case: just use system colors in your UI using SystemColor class (if that's just what you need) or use the same class for analyzing a contrast between current foreground and background colors (if you need to know if system colors are high contrast). You can also check the system theme name, but it's quite unreliable method.

What would be getDesktopProperty() for Linux?

1 Answers1