Contrast cannot order the ladder. On a dark surface the highest-contrast
tone is the palest one, so a 7:1 primary came out near-white while the
secondary kept the family's color; the ladder read inverted, and for the
shipped semantic greens and reds the primary level was already satisfied
by the secondary, so the two levels resolved to the same hex.
Emphasis is chromatic intensity now. Quiet recedes toward the surface at
the 3:1 non-text floor, secondary keeps the family color at the 4.5:1
text floor, and primary is the most chromatic tone the same floor allows.
Every level stays legible on the window and the button surface, and the
primary is a strictly more saturated member of its family on both
schemes. The reformatted palettes move the two upper levels onto the
shared floor and leave the quiet level alone.
Tint says which hue, style says how much shape, and nothing said how loud.
Call sites that have a hierarchy (a card hover panel's nav strip, the visual
database filter toolbar) could only pick between "the theme color" and
"another theme color", so "this is the important one" had no way to be
expressed and every glyph in a surface arrived with the same weight.
Add `IconEmphasis` as the third axis: Quiet, Secondary, Primary. It travels
inside `IconTint` instead of becoming a fourth `loadThemedIcon` parameter, so
every existing call site keeps working and its look, and emphasis reads as
part of the same "how should this glyph be inked" decision as the tint.
- Primary lifts a neutral glyph to `QPalette::Highlight`, so the surface's own
action color names the primary action instead of a second gray token, and
pushes both neutral and tinted glyphs to a 7:1 floor.
- Quiet blends toward the surface and stops at the 3:1 WCAG non-text floor,
for glyphs that label a control rather than act (the magnifier in a search
field, a section marker).
- Secondary is the previous color verbatim.
The default ink borrows enough accent to sit off the palette's pole (5.4:1 on
light, 6.4:1 on dark), so the 7:1 primary floor is measurably above it in both
schemes instead of being lost against a near-black or near-white default. The
tests pin that order where it exists, and the hue shift still separates the
levels at a glance.
Disabled glyphs and the Selected -> HighlightedText swap are unchanged at
every emphasis level.
Neutral icons resolved `currentColor` straight to `QPalette::WindowText`. A
glyph is not a word: it is a 16-24px mark drawn with a 2-unit stroke, so
antialiasing thins it until it reads lighter than the text beside it, in the
one color the palette reserves for reading. The result is that icons recede
into the chrome exactly where they should anchor it.
Add `theme_icon_ink`, one rule with one job: mix a share of the theme accent
into the neutral text color, then hold the result to a contrast floor. The
accent share gives the glyph chroma the text does not have, so it reads as an
icon rather than as leftover text, and it is derived from `QPalette::Highlight`
rather than a new token. The floor keeps a theme with a weak text color from
producing an illegible glyph.
Only the neutral label roles (`WindowText`, `Text`) are inked. Semantic tints
are hues the call site chose on purpose, disabled uses the disabled group, and
the selected-row swap to `HighlightedText` is unchanged.
The WCAG contrast math moves from `theme_icon_badge` to the new unit, so badge
ink decisions and the floor share one implementation.
Tests: the ink rule against every shipped palette, the weak-text floor, and the
palette-following render tests now ask the rule instead of restating its
output. A preview sheet sweeps the accent share at 0-35% over window and button
surfaces for both schemes.
