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Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Theming Cakewalk


Colin Nicholls

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13 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Okay I just uploaded v.2020.09.18 of the massively refactored Y.L.I.P.

Looks nice!!!!!!!

1 hour ago, Matthew White said:

Cakewalk made recent changes to the Synth Rack?

I wondered about this, too.

Quote

Refreshing the UI after changing a theme ideally requires re-starting Cakewalk. Merely switching themes in an open instance of Cakewalk may not fully respect the theme changes.** Clearly there's some caching going on.

**I noticed this, too, and wondered if it was because different things [UI elements] get set up, stored, and restored at different points--software start up, project load, etc.  I meant to ask if there was a list of what gets set up when.  Maybe over time that could be added to the Theme Guide.

I know I commented on this with regard to the Notes Browser colors; not sure if that has changed since then.

But as you point out--if you don't see changes from switching to a newly edited theme, best practice says to restart Cakewalk (at least once).  Not sure if recent changes to Workspaces had an impact on any of this.

Thanks for the amazing work you have done with the Theme Guide, to all the theme developers (and updaters of older themes, and tweakers who share their finds), and to Cakewalk for including and continuing to update the customizability.  

 

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4 hours ago, Matthew White said:

Cakewalk made recent changes to the Synth Rack?

Yes. Um, it's documented in the YLIP 😃

Basically in 2020.08, the Synth Rack was updated so that the names of the Synth (selected/un-selected) took their background and foreground colors from the Track View Selected/Un-selected track name.

The change was a little bit under-the-radar.

Previously, there was a dedicated Theme Element for the synth name background and the selected synth wasn't so obvious. The current state is good for out-of-the-box visibility, but does make it a little trickier to customize, if you want to get into the Synth Rack docked/undocked states. Hopefully it is clear in the document. Feel free to suggest improvements.

Edited by Colin Nicholls
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26 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Yes. Um, it's documented in the YLIP 😃

Basically in 2020.08, the Synth Rack was updated so that the names of the Synth (selected/un-selected) took their background and foreground colors from the Track View Selected/Un-selected track name.

Thanks for calling this to our attention!!  I will have to check my personal themes to see if they work properly with the change.

image.thumb.png.20a1f49953cf1181c731ca7e854b426f.pngz

Edited by User 905133
added a second set of colors
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1 minute ago, Colin Nicholls said:

I was going to add a revision list to the YLIP document, but then it turned into a full-on refactoring and the revision list idea fell by the wayside.

For the previous revision (the one before this one), I thought of suggesting a "New!!" icon so people could just go through the guide and see what was new quickly.  Not sure if that fits in with what you do; so, its just a thought if you want to use it or not. Not sure if it would save time from a revision list, though.

image.png.21642527d213866eba1923c5e0a2234c.png

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Technical note: I am using LibreOffice Writer to create the document. I had the cross-reference (section C) working great with internal hyperlinks on all the section references to allow the user to look at a Theme element and then zip to a corresponding feature where it was used - and the generated PDF didn't recognize them as hyperlinks! They were blue text with an underline, but not active.

I had to re-do all the section titles as "cross-reference" elements, instead, which work great in the rendered PDF except that they don't look like hyperlinks at all. They do work, though.

Bottom line: In case it isn't obvious, Section C Cross-reference elements to features are click-able. If you open the PDF URL in a modern browser, BACKSPACE or ALT-LEFT will work to return you to your original location.

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22 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

my primary goal with this re-factoring was to make it very clear which Theme elements affected multiple parts of the application UI. The cross-reference includes a links against each element that is covered in different parts of Section A.

😍 This is huge!

Who is the man? Why, I do believe it's you!

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I have just uploaded v.2020.09.30 of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer on Creating Cakewalk Themes.

See URL link in the top post.

I updated to LibreOffice 7.0 and did some visual tweaking, but in the process also added a new Case Study, and made the cross-reference links bi-directional. So now, if you're working in a particular feature and you want to see what else might use this specific color or image, you are both notified that dependencies exist, and you can also quickly find out what they are.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been working on a new theme and in the process I found some aspects of the latest Theming Primer to be, well, less convenient than I expected. Also, LibreOffice kept crashing as I tried to update and maintain the document.

So, um, I've kind of returned to the original format, but without losing the handy ability to cross-reference places where a theming element is used for more than one purpose. I've removed Section C and integrated the information back into Section A. Also there's a lot more content.

At the same time I've corrected the name of the PDF so that it actually matches the title of the document. The new URL is:

https://prodigalsounds.com/sonar/themes/Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Creating Cakewalk Themes.pdf

Version 2020.10.17

I've updated the first post in this thread with the new information.

Edited by Colin Nicholls
Uploaded re-exported PDF with the hyperlinks corrected.
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2 hours ago, sjoens said:

Curious if you could make the Contents section on pg2 linkable .

It's working for me when I open in from the URL in FireFox. Also when downloaded and opened in Foxit Reader. Can you try in other browsers, or let me know what your configuration is?

EDIT: Note that I updated the document twice yesterday, the second time was to fix some links. So it's possible you're looking at an older revision? They'll be at least one more update before I take a break from it for a while.

Edited by Colin Nicholls
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Spotted a couple of errors on p. 62: the YLIP refers to Global / Alternative Text #1 as specifying the color of the Header text on a selected PC module. I suspect it's actually Alternative Text #2, but in any case, it's not Alternative Text #1 (which seems to affect nothing).

Next entry, Track view / Unfocused Track Text, refers to "Present name text color" s/b "Preset name color"

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6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Spotted a couple of errors on p. 62: the YLIP refers to Global / Alternative Text #1 as specifying the color of the Header text on a selected PC module. I suspect it's actually Alternative Text #2, but in any case, it's not Alternative Text #1 (which seems to affect nothing).

Next entry, Track view / Unfocused Track Text, refers to "Present name text color" s/b "Preset name color"

It's page 63, and Global/Alternative Text #1 is in fact the correct element for specifying the text color for a SELECTED ProChannel module. No points awarded.

Good catch on "present", I'll fix it. Of course it is "preset". You get one point.

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My apologies, and thank you for not docking a point from my house.

I think I misunderstood the "not yet identified" for Alt Text #1. on p. 8. When you say that, do you mean that you haven't identified how the color parameter affects things in that section, or you haven't yet identified it anywhere?

Edited by Starship Krupa
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