I'm late posting this by a few weeks due to illness. Therefore, I cannot identify the date of the updates in question.
After installing updates, all of my settings designed to help me read the screen more easily disappeared. All of the desktop icons are completely different and larger. All color settings are gone. I had everything set to a dark background with white text.
BIG PROBLEM: When I open documents in LibreOffice Writer, the background is now white and no text is showing. If I select all and set the text to black, still nothing shows. I cannot get it to show no matter what I try. But it is there because I can copy and paste it into a text editor and it shows (without formatting obviously).
I usually have confidence in my ability to set the various formats to my liking and I have copious notes on how I do it. But none of it works now. I cannot get dark backgrounds, I cannot see nor edit .odt documents. Yet the system seems stable. Text does show up in Yahoo mail and in the Firefox browser normally.
I cannot find any mention of this on this forum so it must just be my system.
Thanks for your response, Topaz. I did try that and it is having no effect ... very strange. In the past, I have had a few occasions when the font and the background color were the same. Of course, nothing was visible. But when I selected the text, it became visible. So I knew that I needed to change the color combo. This time the text does not become visible when selected and changing colors seems to have no effect.
I am considering uninstalling and re-installing LibreOffice. Maybe some of its code got squashed. However, that would not explain why so many other interface characteristics changed outside of LibreOffice.
I do have Timeshift running in RSYNC Mode. I may take the system back a month, reinstalll all of the updates (gulp!) and see if that fixes everything.
I was going to suggest Timeshift. Hope you get things back how they should be. My eldest with Lupus needs a similar layout like this:
But instead of KDE neonuser I installed MX-Linux KDE with similar result in terms of viewing, minus screen reader. The entire system and apps white on black and Comic Sans set system wide including Firefox which I changed recently for them.
Timeshift: First, I restored a snapshot of the system files from 1 month ago. This did not fix things. So then I took it back 1 year. This, too, did not fix things. So then I took it back to the present. The good news is that I can now see and edit .odt files in LibreOffice. I have been recovering from an illness. I think this must explain why I could not figure out what to do with these documents. I really don't know what to try next. There were no errors during the Timeshift restores.
Thank-you for reminding me about Tweaks. I used it a long time ago to set my display preferences, but its settings seem to be being ignored now. All of the settings for Theme seem to be what I set them to. Here is a screenshot of my Theme settings from Gnome Tweaks.
I have done all of that each time I did a Timeshift restore. It did nothing that I could detect. Each time I changed settings with Gnome Tweaks and Zorin Appearance. I could detect no change UNTIL after I went through all of the Timeshift restores and returned to the present. Now I have everything with a dark background and white text. The only remaining problem is I still have high-contrast icons on the desktop and in the file manager. I have high-contrast selected nowhere. I have been able to change the size of the icons, but not their appearance.
I exaggerated. I have the most important apps running with a dark background and white text. Some websites, such as Zorin Forum and the Text Editor (gedit) are still with glaring white background with black text.
I did as you suggested. I reinstalled Tweaks and Zorin Appearance. I changed the icon set to Gnome. In Tweaks, the icon set had been Zorin Light, but in Zorin Appearance the icon name was showing as blank. The drop-down menu of icons sets in Tweaks is very long, but in Zorin Appearance there were only 4 choices: Adwaita, Gnome, HiColor and HiContrast (none were selected). I changed it to Gnome. I boot the OS. The icons on the taskbar changed, but not the desktop. The Files icon, which had changed from its usual gray, yellow and green filing cabnet to an all blue one changed back to the familiar one. The desktop, however, still shows HiContrast.
SIDE NOTE: I am running a browser in a vm (virt-manager). All of the icons are showing as normal there. It is only the host machine that is having an issue.
That is because of Zorin Appearance. When You there select the Accent Colors, then autamatically the fitting Icons for the Color will set up, too. And when You go there to the ''Other'' Tab, there will only show third-party Themes and Icons. So, it is empty because a Zorin Theme is set up.
Gnome Tweaks is a more general Program for cutomize Gnome. It isn't so ... specified like Zorin Appearance. So, there You can see all Themes and Icons what are available.
So, Gnome Tweaks show You Zorin Light because it is chosen. But Zorin Appearance doesn't show You Zorin Light because it belongs to the Accent Colors Tab called ''Zorin'' and is not in the ''Other'' Tab. That is totally normal and should be like that.
Okay, let's try it turn off the Desktop Icons Extension and turn it on again. Maybe that could help. For this we use the so-called Extension Manager. Yu can find it in the Gnome Software Store. It looks like this:
(Don't be irritated by the Language, my System is in german)
When You have installed it, open it and on the ''Installed'' Tab scroll down until You found the Zorin Desktop Icons Extension and turn it off, look that the Icons on the Desktop are disappeared and then turn it on again:
I appreciate your help. Do not worry about an occasional German word popping up. I studied German many, many years ago, but remember almost nothing now. Your English is excellent.
I installed the Extension-Manager. When I turn off desktop icons, they disappear. When I turn them back on, they re-appear as HiContrast icons.
Hmm ... Okay, when You go to Zorin Appearance and there in the Zorin Tab. When You click there on the grey Circle and the dark Field under it what happens? Do the Icons change?
You can these install with the Extension Manager on the ''Browse'' Tab. But try one after another and not all at the same Time. And turn off one before use the other.
I must have reached the limit on reply size. Some of what I typed was lost. ```
sudo apt reinstall gnome-shell-extension-zorin-desktop-icons
I will try installing an alternative icon set. I think this has real promise. But I will have to do it later because a visitor has just arrived. Thanks again for your continued support.
I'm getting truncated. Is there a limit to how big a topic can become? I'm being encouraged to use several different threads, but that doesn't make sense in this case.
RESOLUTION: I have resolved the icon issue. There is a tiny icon shaped like a man that appears to the left on my taskbar. I have paid it little to no attention, but I must have explored it at some point. I say this because it has a switch to turn on hi contrast that was on. I turned the switch off and the icons went back to normal ... no longer high contrast. I think it is an oversight that selecting hi contrast using this switch is not reflected in either Zorin Appearance nor Gnome Tweaks. C'est la vie.
