documentation Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Theming Cakewalk

[Colin Nicholls]

Here is the URL of the latest version of my Visual Guide to creating Cakewalk Themes. (The title is a reference to Neal Stephenson's excellent SCI-FI Novel "The Diamond Age".)

The document is a work-in-progress, and will contain areas where incomplete information is provided. If you identify an area that could use additional content to help your Theme creation, please let me know and I'll look at enhancing those sections.

Have at it!

 

A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Theming Cakewalk.pdf

 

Edited September 25 by Colin Nicholls
Updated 2023.09 for final Cakewalk By Bandlab update

[Matthew White]

Wow! Whilst I'm not keen on the "Young Lady's" part of the name and wonder the reason for using that, this is an amazing piece of work! Well set out and very helpful, I appreciate the time and effort put into this, I once made a start on something like this but soon quit as I felt it was too much for me and it wasn't looking as good as yours does either. Good stuff! Thanks!! 👍 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Matthew White

[SteveC]

Ditto, this is quite an endeavor, Colin.    I know it's not 100% yet, but really useful.

[User 905133]

Super nice layout and wonderful ToC! Very handy!!!

 

 

 

Edited December 14, 2019 by User 905133

[Colin Nicholls]

Thanks, guys.

The title is a riff on Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" which is a pretty cool SF book; recommended.

It seemed to be a good time to prepare the document, as it is clear that the Theme Editor is pretty stable in the development cycle. The bugs and inconsistencies aren't going to be worth the time the skeleton dev group would need to spend, so documenting seems reasonable.

I'm not expecting anyone to go through this line by line looking for errors; and there's definitely more useful stuff that could be added. All suggestions welcome! If you have any theme-ing tips or tricks that you know of, let me know and I'll add them in.

I'd like to make this a community effort and of course I'll adjust the credits to suit.

[Canopus]

Great job! There must have been countless hours going into that document for the benefit of the community. Hopefully this will help more CbB users get over the threshold to make custom theme modifications, either for their own private use or out in the open.

As you also actively participate in other CbB sub-forums, maybe you should also add a link to the document in your signature to spread the word outside the small group of users visiting the UI Themes forum.

[scook]

1 hour ago, Colin Nicholls said:

The bugs and inconsistencies aren't going to be worth the time the skeleton dev group Ben Staton would need to spend, so documenting seems reasonable.

Fixed

AFAIK, this is all Ben.

Some issues may be addressed when and if the previously discussed factory supplied light theme (not Mercury) is created.

[chuckebaby]

While I rarely/if ever venture over to this UI forum without supervision, I must say im glad I did. this is a gem @Colin Nicholls. A lot of depth. thanks.

[garybrun]

Thank you for taking the time to create this.
Very helpful indeed.

[tecknot]

Excellent work.

Kind regards,

tecknot

[Starship Krupa]

On 12/14/2019 at 9:25 AM, Colin Nicholls said:

The title is a riff on Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" which is a pretty cool SF book; recommended.

For the effort you went to and as useful as it's going to be, its creator can name it anything, and I happen to like the name, and quirky "guide" names in general. "A Young Person's Guide To King Crimson," "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy."

All the funnier given how the demographic skews toward the male in our fair forum.

[Colin Nicholls]

The most recent version of the document is v.0.9.2 and it is available at the URL above.

I have paused working on it as of a few days ago, so I expect this is a stable version if you want to download it for easy access.

[User 905133]

1 hour ago, Colin Nicholls said:

The most recent version of the document is v.0.9.2 and it is available at the URL above.

I have paused working on it as of a few days ago, so I expect this is a stable version if you want to download it for easy access.

Much progress in this version--nice!!!!  I was working on some of the ones now in your newest pdf.  I should probably wait until you are done; would save me some time!  THANKS!

Not sure if the TBDs here (see images below) are ones you looked at or will be looking at, but this is something I explored last week as part of my aging eyesight tweaks. 

  

Disclaimer: I am not an artist, graphics designer, theme designer, etc. Just doin' tweaks for my eyes!

Edited December 18, 2019 by User 905133
to add a disclaimer so people realize I am not an expert; just sharing what I stumbled onto in case it helps others on their journeys

[User 905133]

re: unsure where logos are: I get an ASIO logo  here: Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings > ASIO Panel . Not sure if that's the only place, if others get it in their ASIO Panels, or what. I know I have seen some of the other logos; not sure where.

[User 905133]

I'd be interested to know if there is an easier/better way to tweak these than having to re-design and overwrite the default images.

Edited December 18, 2019 by User 905133
to fix wording

[Colin Nicholls]

Steve -

Thanks for your comments and observations. I'll respond in one reply

 

Re: Logos    -
I don't think the ASIO Panel is furnished by the Cakewalk application. At least, my ASIO Panel shows an ECHO logo which isn't one of the ones in Global | About Box.
But, good thinking...

 

Re: Input(etc) control icons -
Nice graphic! I'll just include your image verbatim in the doc if that's OK with you.

 

Re: Control Bar Background (collapsed) -
I just double-checked this. I'm not sure what I used when I tested earlier, but this time I replaced the graphic with an empty rectangle flood-filled with yellow with an alpha transparency value at ~50% and this is what I see:

So the customized graphic is overlaying the original. There may be places in the UI where an alpha-channel is respected, or not, and I guess this is a place where it IS respected. I'm not planning on testing this everywhere!

 

Re: "I should probably wait until you are done; would save me some time!" -
Well, I had planned to stop working on the doc for a while. As long as I was working on a new custom theme, it seemed reasonable to log my findings, but I think I need to take a break.

That said, I'll add your input control icon image as the first change to go into v.0.9.3. Any other updates - from you or anyone, either posted here or as a PM - I will integrate into the document to be included into the next release.

 

 

[Colin Nicholls]

I've updated the PDF document to the latest version, 0.9.3. It includes several changes including a new section at the end for Case Studies, in which I discuss customizing the Control Bar modules.

[Colin Nicholls]

Updated to 0.9.4, minor update but fixes a couple of things and updates a couple of images and adds a bit at the end about clip colors.

[User 905133]

BTW, I am 96% certain that at one point a I had different colors for the CV Names for the MIDI and AUDIO. I have tried to get that back, but I have not been able to.  As you discovered, audio, instrument, and midi now all have the same NAMETXT color. At one point I had one green and one default blue in TV, but had reversed them in CV. I tried to change it so CV and TV track names were in the same color, but have not been able to get it back. The earliest full installer I have is 2019.11. If I had earlier ones, I'd test them.  I have tried *.col / colors, too.  

Nice work in the newest edition!!!  Others should be aware that you are changing the file where you have it stored, so the edit date of Post # 1 in the thread has not been changing.  This works for me, but might confuse others if they are going by the edit date of Post #1 (above)/

[Colin Nicholls]

Yeah, the link in the top post should remain viable with the most recent version, even though the forum post itself doesn't change its updated time. Maybe this is confusing.  I know there's nothing preventing me from just editing the top post directly with an update history or something. Perhaps I'll do that next time.