LibreOffice's "Automatic" text color isn't black in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise!

After using Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin for some time, I noticed that one of the applications that I use all of the time -- LibreOffice -- was not using black (#000000) as the "Automatic" (default) text colour for new documents that I created. This is extremely annoying because I like to copy and paste text into documents and use the "Clear Formatting" feature. Unfortunately, this causes the text to revert to a light grey (gray) colour: #3C3C3C. Yuck!

There is a solution, however. Benjamin Drung (bdrung) wrote on 2011-03-23 that a user can modify Ubuntu's default GTK-2.0 theme, "Ambiance," and change the default colour to black. To fix the problem:

1. Open the gtk theme for Ambiance
   (/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc)
2. Search for ntext_color
   
3. Replace #3C3C3C with #000000

Re-load LibreOffice; problem solved.

Why LibreOffice uses the GTK theme system to determine its "Automatic" colour is beyond me; this seems like a very irritating "feature."