IOhannes and James. Thanks for the replies.

I found the relevant line in pdtk_canvas.tcl. I know modifying that isn't permanent, because the next update might break it, but it did let me replace -background white with -background gray95, which is cool. Now, I'll just have to figure out if it's possible to reuse this command in a tcl plugin file. 

I downloaded the tcl command plugin through deken, which seems like a great way to test commands.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. This forum is an amazing group of people!

Sam






Message: 2
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2022 16:10:20 +0100
From: IOhannes m zmoelnig <zmoelnig@iem.at>
To: pd-list@lists.iem.at
Subject: Re: [PD] plugin.tcl not changing anything, Linux
Message-ID: <454abfa4-0c48-ad66-fff9-71cc36b84423@iem.at>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"


On 3/3/22 15:59, Samuel Burt wrote:
> Hi, list.
>
> In Pop_OS (Debian derivative), I created a file called
> *canvasgrey-plugin.tcl* and populated it with:
>
> set ::canvas_fill "gray75"
> set ::text_color "#222"
>
> I've openned Pd, created new windows, saved the preferences, but seen no
> change in the canvas or text color. Any suggestions?
>
> This page <http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins/GuiPluginsAPI> seems recent

this page refers to pd-extended (long dead), and doesn't apply to pd
(vanilla).

theres currently no way to set the colors in Pd, but there's a [196]
that tries to add this possibility.

gasmr
IOhannes


[196] https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/196
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2022 13:57:26 -0500
From: Samuel Burt <composer.samuel.burt@gmail.com>
To: Pd-list <pd-list@lists.iem.at>
Subject: [PD] plugin.tcl not changing anything, linux
Message-ID:
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Thanks, IOhannes, for the link. It's easy to get lost in old documentation.

Does anyone know if any of the instructions on
http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins are applicable to Pd 0.5+ anymore or
should we update the page to show which versions of Pd are capable of using
these tcl plugins?

Sam






> On 3/3/22 15:59, Samuel Burt wrote:
> > Hi, list.
> >
> > In Pop_OS (Debian derivative), I created a file called
> > *canvasgrey-plugin.tcl* and populated it with:
> >
> > set ::canvas_fill "gray75"
> > set ::text_color "#222"
> >
> > I've openned Pd, created new windows, saved the preferences, but seen no
> > change in the canvas or text color. Any suggestions?
> >
> > This page <http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins/GuiPluginsAPI> seems
> recent


this page refers to pd-extended (long dead), and doesn't apply to pd
> (vanilla).

theres currently no way to set the colors in Pd, but there's a [196]
> that tries to add this possibility.

gasmr
> IOhannes


[196] https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/196
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2022 20:58:06 +0100
From: IOhannes m zm?lnig <zmoelnig@iem.at>
To: pd-list@lists.iem.at
Subject: Re: [PD] plugin.tcl not changing anything, linux
Message-ID: <1272def0-104c-cff5-4577-49be811d6acf@iem.at>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"


On 3/3/22 19:57, Samuel Burt wrote:
> Thanks, IOhannes, for the link. It's easy to get lost in old documentation.
>
> Does anyone know if any of the instructions on
> http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins are applicable to Pd 0.5+ anymore or
> should we update the page to show which versions of Pd are capable of using
> these tcl plugins?

most of the information is *probably* still correct.
it's just the "global variables for setting colors" section that is
explicitely for "Pd-extended 0.41" (as the first line in the paragraph
says).

the information that is glaringly incorrect is:
- all the links pointing to sourceforge and the SVN
- the reference to pd-gui.tcl (back in the olden days, the entire GUI
was implemented in a single file "pd-gui.tcl". these days, the GUI is
split over a few dozen files in the tcl/ folder.


anyhow: the biggest problem with gui-plugins is, that there is no
well-defined public API.
we somewhat try to keep things backwards compatible, but the promise is
much weaker than on the Pd-core side.

Pd-GUI has never really been "designed"; it just grew, with stuff added
as it was convenient, and adjusted to fit newer needs; i do minor
refactoring of the code whenever i need to touch it, so it (hopefully)
becomes more robust (also from an API perspective); but i'm not really
claiming to create a consistent interface.

so your quite on your own when it comes to GUI plugins.

otoh, there have been GUI plugins that were created 10 years ago and
(afaik) they still work as expected, to the situation is not really bad.

your best bet for writing your own plugin is probably to just search
deken for "*-plugin" to get some examples:
   http://deken.puredata.info/search.html?libraries=*-plugin

and of course, study the code in Pd's tcl/ folder, to see what is
actually there.

gmfdsa
IOhannes
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2022 17:10:18 -0300
From: James Correa <jcorrea.mus@gmail.com>
To: Pd-List <pd-list@lists.iem.at>
Subject: Re: [PD] plugin.tcl not changing anything, linux
Message-ID:
        <CADvmPOmRis6d-A1n_NhuZXD9rdC9ffzrOkuApf_sjpZLM0vvqA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

If you want  color themes in Pd you can use PdNext from Seb:
https://github.com/sebshader/pdnext/releases/tag/0.52-1
I am on linux too, manjaro and works quite well!!
He now has a theme-picker plugin, it is quite useful too:
https://github.com/sebshader/color-themes-plugin

James

On Thu, 3 Mar 2022 at 15:59, Samuel Burt <composer.samuel.burt@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, IOhannes, for the link. It's easy to get lost in old documentation.
>
> Does anyone know if any of the instructions on
> http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins are applicable to Pd 0.5+ anymore or
> should we update the page to show which versions of Pd are capable of using
> these tcl plugins?
>
> Sam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 3/3/22 15:59, Samuel Burt wrote:
>> > Hi, list.
>> >
>> > In Pop_OS (Debian derivative), I created a file called
>> > *canvasgrey-plugin.tcl* and populated it with:
>> >
>> > set ::canvas_fill "gray75"
>> > set ::text_color "#222"
>> >
>> > I've openned Pd, created new windows, saved the preferences, but seen no
>> > change in the canvas or text color. Any suggestions?
>> >
>> > This page <http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins/GuiPluginsAPI> seems
>> recent
>
>
> this page refers to pd-extended (long dead), and doesn't apply to pd
>> (vanilla).
>
> theres currently no way to set the colors in Pd, but there's a [196]
>> that tries to add this possibility.
>
> gasmr
>> IOhannes
>
>
> [196] https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/196
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pd-list@lists.iem.at mailing list
> UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
> https://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
>
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