[PD] changing the look of Pd to be more readable

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Steffen Juul hat gesagt: // Steffen Juul wrote:

> On 04/11/2007, at 12.03, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> >I very much support that approach.
> 
> I also think preferences/themes are a good ide. This could quickly  
> become the bike shred colouring story over again.
> 
> >The only way a GUI overhaul can work in the long run IMO is to make a
> >configuration system. This actually probably should not be a command
> >line flag like "-originalgui" or "-newgui", but a new configuration
> >file for themes that can be loaded with "-theme" or so.
> 
> I like the idea of separating it, but i think it would be good to  
> consider the possibilities to get "it" into vanilla Pd as well. 

I don't think it would be too hard to get it into vanilla Pd. The idea
would be to first replace the hardcoded stuff in pd.tk with variable.
There's a lot of "-background white" or "-borderwidth 1" there, which
would become: "-background $theme_bgcolor" or "-borderwidth
$theme_bwidth" etc. The theme config file then would just need to be
included from pd.tk with something like (pseudocode): 

    
    # set defaults:
    set theme_bgcolor white
    set theme_bwidth 1
    # ...
    
    # source theme as provided from command line to overwrite
    # defaults:

    source $theme_from_commandline

The file "theme_from_commandline" would just need to specify
variables in tcl-syntax:

    set theme_bgcolor grey
    set theme_bwidth 2
    ...

People then could write lots of funky themes and distribute them on
websites and everybody would be happy couples.

The only thing to write would be some variables in pd.tk and a loader
which fills the $theme_from_commandline variable. And maybe think
about if simply sourcing the file is a security hole.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                                     _ ______footils.org__