I have a dialog which contains a pygtk.treeview for listing tasks by priority. Each row has the background colour set based on that priority, so for example the highest priority has a light red background.
The row selection color is not so easy to change. I can set it using treeview.modify_base(gtk.STATE_SELECTED, "#C4C4C4"), but no colours work well with the colours used to enhance the concept of priority.
I had the idea to change the selection colour to be a slightly darker version of the colour used as the normal row background, so in the example above, that would be a darker red. I tried calling the function above in response to the treeselection's changed signal, and it works, but with heavy flickering.
Another idea was to change the selection to transparent and put a border around it instead, but as far as I can tell, this isn't possible.
Note: I'm aware that this violates the theme selected by the user. I feel I have a good reason for it. Having the priority indicated by colour makes it instantly recognisable. The selection colour hides this. If you have alternative suggestions, I am open to them, but it needs to retain the ease at which a user can identify the priority.
You could add a separate pixbuf cell (say, the same size as a small icon) to the far left to indicate selection. Selected rows could fill this with a more "solid" (saturated) version of the colour used for the background. For example. if you use a pink background for high priority, you could use red for the selection indicator. Or you could use an icon.
To implement this with the colour filling method:
gtk.gdk.Pixbuf that allows you to create a solid area of colour, perhaps using the fill method.You can then color or uncolour the "selection cell" upon selection changes to indicate which row is selected, or display an icon (eg. a stock symbol).
Note that I haven't implemented this, it's just an idea. It departs significantly from the usual GTK selection indication, so (obviously) use your judgement as to whether it's useable.