Matthew White Posted February 7, 2022 Author Share Posted February 7, 2022 (edited) 37 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: But I might uninstall and reinstall, with all the default locations pointing to my D drive. If you do that, I'd just like to point out that it seems Cakewalk will always look to the C drive for themes and there doesn't appear to be a way to change it but you can still use custom themes by creating the 'CakewalkContent' folder and the 'CakewalkThemes' subfolder on C. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/31289-cakewalk-themes-not-accesible-on-d-drive/ Edited February 7, 2022 by Matthew White Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 Matthews thanks for the forewarning tip. Very timely and handy so I can keep away from known/Phantom issues. I cannot wait to explore and use your Themes!! to make things easier for usage and for eyes. br Sri. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scook Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 3 hours ago, Matthew White said: If you do that, I'd just like to point out that it seems Cakewalk will always look to the C drive for themes and there doesn't appear to be a way to change it but you can still use custom themes by creating the 'CakewalkContent' folder and the 'CakewalkThemes' subfolder on C. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/31289-cakewalk-themes-not-accesible-on-d-drive/ This is one reason to install using defaults then relocate data using directory junctions. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 Matthews/Colin et al. Thanks for your attention and actions.. they were a great help in ways you would never know.. I uninstalled and reinstalled, and this time used the Advanced Custom Install procedure, so I could customize the locations wherever possible. Thereon, I copied all the Custom Themes [unzipped form] downloaded from Matthews into the C drive Themes location. Started Cakewalk and Viola... I can see all the Custom Themes and laying with them right now. So the problem has Vanished. My feeling is that I might have used Preferences to change the Location of Cakewalk Projects and Video location(s). I did not touch other locations, as I had little understanding about them, and as a precaution left them as-is and did not dare to change them. Somehow this had some side-effects on Themes and Probably on some other things, which I can no longer create/reproduce. Something can investigate using "Clean Room" techniques. But some points of observation with Custom Installing: a) Only some folder locations can be changed. I think this should be updated so all folder locations can be customized, for the reason that C drives typically have far little space than other drives. Also it is left with plenty of space for System, Page Sys, Logs and O/S Caches. Here is what I was able to change/customize for installation: D:\0CakeWalk <--- I was able to change this. I think this is some kind of main location? I use a zero prefix for simply pushing it ahead in sorting order. VST Plugins: D:\AAMusicWork\VST64 <-- obvious. I was able to change this. This is where I keep all my VST64. I wonder whether is for all VST types: 32, 64, VSTi, VST3 etc. Shared Components: C:\Program Files\Cakewalk <-- did not give me an option or was predefined. Content & Projects: C:\Cakewalk Content <- same here. C:\Cakewalk Projects <- same here. Interestingly Themes folder is buried one level below the above location(s). I might try changing some of the C drive folders to D drive under 0CakeWalk folder using Preferences -> Folders. I am seeing that it has many more Location Names, that was presented to me during Custom Install. I will not tamper with the Themes Folder here, as Matthews had forewarned me that Cakewalk may that location somehow hardwired and will not look at other places. Thanks again as this can make things easier on my eyes and usage and ramp up faster. regards Sri. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 Some Screen Shots... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 I wonder which of these C drive locations I can move/point to a location on my D drive? I can create those D drive locations and copy the original/current contents from their corresponding C drive locations. I have already DONE this now. I will not try to do anything with THEMES given the known issues -- it is working fine now. It is taking about 260MB of storage. Not too big but not small either. "Cakewalk Content" is the large one ~1.86GB. Thanks in Advance. Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew White Posted February 7, 2022 Author Share Posted February 7, 2022 2 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: I wonder which of these C drive locations I can move/point to a location on my D drive? Unfortunately I can't help with that as I don't know, I just have 1 drive on my system, all I know is the theme thing due to the post I saw on here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 (edited) No worries Matthews. You have covered lot of ground already for me. I am going through your themes. I switched to your Orange Theme. It has made a nice difference to the ease of reading, by putting Orange Background behind some of the texts. But not all. I am going through other Themes of yours, hoping to see others which do bold white Text on Darker Background for all the Menu Bar items. So they all standout nicely with better contrast. May be you can point me to one, or give me some tips for which I can use as a Base and some directions for the kind of edits I should be doing. The background to the text should also be different from general background -- and black is very nice for it - as it keep the amount of light/glare to the eyes to a minimum. Thanks and regards Sri. Edited February 7, 2022 by Sridhar Raghavan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew White Posted February 7, 2022 Author Share Posted February 7, 2022 (edited) 13 hours ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: May be you can point me to one, or give me some tips for which I can use as a Base and some directions for the kind of edits I should be doing. I know of someone else with vision problems and he thinks my 'M-Silk' theme is the best to see but I think it will depend on the individual, what works for someone else may not work for you, unfortunately many fonts and their sizes can't be changed so for the most of it I think you may have to change text colours and backgrounds to see which blend works best for you. I recommend checking out Colin Nicholls' 'A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Theming Cakewalk' which is great for finding which items in the theme editor change in Cakewalk. https://prodigalsounds.com/sonar/themes/Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Creating Cakewalk Themes.pdf Edited February 8, 2022 by Matthew White Typo 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 7, 2022 Share Posted February 7, 2022 Thanks Matthew - these are very helpful pointers. I will pursue them. Sri. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 @Sridhar Raghavan Glad you got it sorted. Cakewalk seems to be hard coded to look for its themes in that one location. I agree that all the folder locations should be changeable from within Preferences. I ran into issues when I added a second SSD to my laptop and tried moving my Cakewalk resources to it. You may wish to report your experiences and make suggestions in the Feedback area of the forum. Further tips: If you plan to start doing some theming, the most valuable resource (other than patience) is Colin's Young Lady's Illustrated Primer To Theming Cakewalk. It's the product of years of trial-and-error observation and reverse engineering. While many colors can be changed, in order to alter button images you'll need to get good with a pixel editor. I, too, have vision issues, and two of my themes, Racing Green and Midnight Blue are very contrast-y and address several areas where I have trouble with the stock Cakewalk themes. For instance, I make my button images as visible as possible, including extra effects for the rollovers. You may not find them entirely to taste, but they may give you some ideas. Colin's Mercury RS and my Tungsten RS incorporate a set of "standard" button image changes that he and I prefer. They may make good starting points. Investigate Color Preferences. Go to my themes download folder and download the custom color preset for Racing Green and try it out. The color of the grid lines in Track View can only be changed using Color Preferences, and mine have more contrast than the stock selections. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Starship Krupa Thanks for the above note. Sorry to know that you too have vision issues and hope to pick all you insights about how you have customized Cakewalk for dealing with related issues. Wonderful to know the names of Themes you and Colin have created. I will take a good look, pun intended, at all of them. I have already downloaded the Primer to Theme, as Matthew or Colin pointed me to that. I am going to hold reading that for a bit to catch up on the Themes you all have already created, and also few other Task Idioms I want to get ironed out. I got introduced to Cal by SCOOK and I am eager to get user-level grasp of a few programs there. I just downloaded ~8 themes in a Zip file from your drop box. I am finding that .sth and .clr and .txt files are nicely packaged one level nested below. A quick question about CLR files. Should I just go and install them, following your instructions? rather than worry about possible backtracking issues? Thanks again for the pointers and look forward to any other tips you may have developed of mutual interest for vision challenges of Cakewalk. Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 1 hour ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: A quick question about CLR files. Should I just go and install them, following your instructions? rather than worry about possible backtracking issues? The only issue I've seen anyone have with importing color presets is that after you import one, the name field is blank. So you must type in the name you wish to use (Racing Green or whatever) and save it. The preset will not be saved until you type in a name and save it. They don't overwrite anything, and you can delete them later. For other reference, the Color Preferences dialog doesn't warn you when you are about to overwrite a preset, so take care while experimenting that you don't overwrite any of the stock ones if you want to keep them. So if you come up with something you like and want to save it, make sure you type in the new name before you save the preset. I don't like this (I think that any dialog should warn you before you overwrite), but Color Preferences is very old code. Not likely to change. As a last resort, if you run into trouble with custom colors (which I really don't think you will), there's a button for "Defaults All Colors." P.S. I have a memory that one of the people here did a special high visibility theme, but I did some searching and can't find it. He used larger type on his Control Bar buttons and I think they were black-on-yellow. Can't find it, though.... My own vision issues are those typical with aging (nearsighted, farsighted, astigmatism, I've got them all). More contrast always helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Erik/Starship Krupa Thanks for the clarifications. Just to anchor my understanding further, to avoid errors.. Where do the name clashes come from? From the name of the CLR files or from the actual color names/references/contents contained within them? I assume your STH files are referring to those references and not tied to CLR file names. So I am a bit smarter about the filenames and color names and prevent name clashes and over writes. So for this appetite for clarification details. Thanks in advance Sri. P.S. Appreciate sharing of your Vision issues. Sincerely wish you a complete arrest and reversal of the conditions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 16 hours ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: Where do the name clashes come from? From the name of the CLR files or from the actual color names/references/contents contained within them? I assume your STH files are referring to those references and not tied to CLR file names. So I am a bit smarter about the filenames and color names and prevent name clashes and over writes. Ah, don't be too concerned about all this. Just import the color preset, type a name for it into the name field and save it. Use a new name, not the name of one of the stock presets. That's it. The .STH files are independent of the color presets. If you want to get a deeper understanding of how theme colors relate to custom colors, there is a section in TYLIP about it. Thanks for the wishes about vision issues. Fortunately, corrective lenses take care of it when I have a good prescription (although optometrists have a hard time with my prescription for whatever reason). I hope that the information shared here helps you (and anyone else reading) to have a more visible DAW. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 Starship Krupa thanks for the clarifications. I will go ahead with it today. What is TYLIP - I am hearing it for the first time! I was also hoping to get your tips for the Timeline Cursor and Popup Icons/ToolTips crowding issues. Happy to hear the update on your Vision Issues and Welcome. I am sure these Themes and Notes will benefit many others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 Startship Krupa /Erik Thanks for your tips. I imported Midnight Blue, Racing Green and one other and started modifying Midnight Blue, to gain some understanding of the theming work. Thanks to you and Colleagues (Colin?) for writing an excellent PDF on Theming.. It is coming very handy for knowing what is what -- though I am still not able to reliably figure out everything. I feel like I am making very good progress. I am attaching a Screen Shot below of my Experimental Work in Progress Theme. I have added some annotations on it as well - and you can easily know where there are typos. Progressively I should be able to get things to what suits me best. My main initial goal is to get all the TEXTS - white bold. Looks like Font and Size of Texts cannot be changed. Also many things are Graphics - it has pros/cons. Ability to work with the Themes and Seeing its Effect on Cakewalk is nice, though Cakewalk seems to hold the *.sth file (do not know why) that prevents saving that Theme in the Editor. Wish Cakewalk Theme Panel had a Refresh button, to pull in any changes made. Just a bit of annoyance when you are trying so many items - though functionality complete. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Nicholls Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 On 2/9/2022 at 7:11 AM, Sridhar Raghavan said: What is TYLIP - I am hearing it for the first time! It's a short way of referring to "The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" to creating Cakewalk themes. I think you've already found it ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 Colin very nice to see your note. Kudos for the great PDF you and Denizens have compiled/ created. One thing I was thinking about is combining the information you have in your PDF with some screen shots to help users to identify elements DIRECTLY. The gist/basic idea is: A user can select one of the screen shots (each shot is a UI view of Cakewalk). Given the now-you-see-now-you-do-not-see nature of the UI design, for arguably very good reasons, we may need a set of Screen Shots rather than just one. Click on an area of interest, and get the Navigation Path for the Themes Editor. Ideally using some arms length copy-paste, it would be nice to position to that element(s) in the Themes Editor. Though I see a FIND in its UI, under Color, I do not know how and whether it works. Similar to REGEDIT of windows. But Themes Editor does not seem to support entering or searching for a path. This will enable embolden users to manage their Cakewalk UI (at least the display/appearance) for easing their interactions, especially for folks with some vision challenges. I was hoping that the .STH file might be XML, as that would make creating such things easier. But I noted that it is some closed/binary format - nothing negative, but understandable given the long evolution of Cakewalk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew White Posted February 15, 2022 Author Share Posted February 15, 2022 Pack is now updated to include all my custom Splash Screens and instructions, my splash screen pack also now contains 22 splash screen images instead of the previous 10. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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