Colors on MC 4.7.0.1 are *really* a mess, seconded

[Hugo Vanwoerkom <hvw59601 yahoo com>]

Hi,

Mc user ever since the beginning. Running on Debian Sid.
Which upgraded mc to 4.7.0.1.

And the colors are a *mess* as I reported to Debian userlist:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2010/04/msg00315.html

Nothing now works as before. As noted on this list:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/mc/2010-March/msg00028.html
and a recent Debian bug:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=567119

My color scheme was in the ini file:

[Colors]
base_color=executable=blue,white:viewunderline=yellow,black:normal=red,white:selected=lightgrey,lightgreen:marked=cyan,black:markselect=white,lightgreen:directory=black,white:link=red,white:device=lightgrey,black:special=cyan,black

That translates in 4.7.0.1 to something that gives an instantaneous splitting headache.

And I know the answer you have: use skins.

But there are no skins with a light background. The only skins I found are with a black background, which I 
cannot read. I reported what I found in my post to Debian userlist.

Which leaves me with using the default skin, all blue. And that is progress? Creating a new skin takes days 
and repeated clarification requests because there is no documentation. E.g. when I take the default skin and 
change:

[core]
#    _default_=lightgray;blue
    _default_=black;white

then the effect is startling: directory entries turn bright-white and in mcedit all text is black on white 
with a blue background, which looks ridiculous. And that is changing just one line in a skin! Where is that 
documented?

When you replace a much used function by something entirely different, at least provide a spectrum of 
options. Now I am back to basic blue until some good soul comes up with a decent skin. I just found 2 user 
developed skins: elite_commander and bluemoon, both with black backround: unreadable.

This is holding back my Debian upgrade, unless I pin mc at 4.6.2-pre1 to prevent a replacement of mc by 
4.7.0.1 until some time in the future when skins have been developed by users.

BTW I still use mc 4.1.40-pre8 developed by Oleg "Olegarch" Konovalov:
http://mc.linuxinside.com/cgi-bin/dir.cgi
only for one reason: it fills in the 'To' field in copy and move operations which still hasn't made it into 
the official mc. If the 'To' field is complex, I have to write it down because your dialog box hides it.

Hugo Vanwoerkom