well, the way that the tk handles this kind of thing is generally the "options" database.

The way you would do it with this pr would be to set the colors using a .tcl file in the pd path, which hypothetically already has system, user, and app-specific paths.

It wouldn't be any more complex than any other kind of "configuration" file (see the last uncommented part of doc/7.stuff/colors-plugin.txt for an example. saved with the extension .tcl and put into the pd path this acts to set the various colors to override the defaults)

I suppose I'm not sure what you're after.. if you want some kind of system-wide configuration/theme to apply to the colors then you might be able to do it with tcl options and xrdb, and on windows and mac there exist tk color names to access system themes.

Otherwise, if you want app-specific configuration files/paths for colors then the .tcl plugin file in conjunction with the standard pd paths is pretty much that. (not sure about load order though)

so the way to override the default colors is to put a -plugin.tcl file in the pd path, not change the values in pd-gui.tcl

-seb

-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Osku Schmidt <andre@osku.de>
Sent: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 3:59 am

On Sun, 3 Jan 2021 04:55:07 +0000 (UTC)
Sebastian Shader <sebfumaster@aol.com> wrote:

> Idk that much about x11 but on aqua and windows there are colors like systemHighlight that correspond to system theme colors.
> I think on x11 the way to do it might be through setting .Xresources/.Xdefaults and xrdb

i know that we can set new names (for colors) in xrdb, but can we do it on osx and ms-windows?
(i doubt a general theme will have enough colors/names for all use-cases, so we need new names)

i know that we can use multiple files with xrdb, but can we do it on osx and ms-windows?
(the bigger (as in scope) a file grows, the harder it gets to manage it)

but xrdb is sadly only used by old/legacy apps and almost no new app since a long while now uses it...

therefor i was planning on doing the "compromise standard", that every app/toolkit has its own theme/color/config file and the app manages its handling. so for pd, something like:

- system: /etc/xdg/pd/colors.file
  - (and the same on other operatingsystem, if they have such standard paths)
- user: ~/.config/pd/colors.file
  - (and the same on other operatingsystem, if they have such standard paths)

and the load order would be the "standard" (latter overwrites previous):

1. app defaults
2. system config
3. user config
4. (in case of pd: colors set in pd-patch?)

if this feature is not needed/wanted in vanilla pd, then i would like the included/default colors in pd to be in an own file (instead in pd-gui.tcl) so i can simply overwrite that file in my system after installing pd package. :P

but in any case, thank you for doing all the hard work to get custom colors in pd!
(that white pd-patch background was blowing my eyes in my dim-lit studio)


cheerio
.oskude


ps. on a funny side-note, i am experimenting to see if i can (as in will it be feasible to me) color my whole linux system (from linux console to last app) with just 8(16) colors (cause thats the default of linux console) :D