[cairoshikobon]

The old Win32 controls can change their background color just fine. I used these controls in VB6 (1998) and they all had background and foreground properties. It will take time for each app, but won't require a full re-write. More like a single if condition in the startup code.

For this specific case of Notepad:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/wm-c...

> If an application processes this message, the return value is a handle to a brush that the system uses to paint the background of the static control.

Discussion from 2001 referencing the 1998 MSDN documentation:

https://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?98513-How-can-I-trig...

<Rant> People who haven't used Win32 in its hey day forget how many apps had awesome and unusual look and feel and only relate the the default Windows apps with no effort whatsoever at customization. Except the touch stuff, Win32 can do pretty much anything Metro can and probably more. </Rant>

[jussij]

Some of the controls allow you to change their colors, but that is not true for all controls.

As an example consider the Win32 based wxWidgets library.

The developers state it can't be made to support 'dark mode' only because not all Windows controls allow for easy color changing:

https://forums.wxwidgets.org/viewtopic.php?t=45869

[rbanffy]

Implementing what's possible to implement and leaving the rest broken is pretty ok. Developers will avoid the broken controls or code replacement ones.