The box in the Take Lane header where you can take notes

[Starship Krupa]

I don't know what it's called, but when you have your Take Lanes open on a Track,  there's a notepad space to the right of the Lane controls and to the left of the actual lanes, where you can make notes on your takes. Pretty handy for when you wind up with a lot of lanes.

The only problem with it is that for every theme I can find, the box' background is charcoal grey and the text is black, making it hard to read unless I highlight the text.

So, themesters, anyone know what color sets that background? Better still if I could find out how to set that text color, too. I went through the Colors in Preferences and didn't find either of them in there (doesn't mean they're not in there).

I'm going to set to the task again tonight and report back if I find anything....

[scook]

It's pretty easy to get unintended consequences when heavily modifying Mercury or Tungsten. There are quite a few strange dependencies. This is why I chose to work around the edges of the two Cakewalk supplied themes first restoring button relief and an alternative to orange in Tungsten and providing a alternative to blue in Mercury. I avoided large scale tweaking of the the Cakewalk supplied color schemes to insure things like text fields work like Mercury and Tungsten.

It will take a little detective work to find which mod changed the text field. The theme editor provides a way to narrow down the search a bit by filtering on modified colors. Comparing the modified elements of the user theme to Mercury/Tungsten and tweaking the modified colors to something that will stand out for the possible candidates are the only ways I know to detect the areas of the UI affected by a color setting.

[Matthew White]

The background appears to not be changeable, the text can be changed in the editor under: Track View / Control Text and Values, just watch out for any other areas that may change. You say every theme you've tried has black text there, I better go and check my themes then as that's one area I didn't check, it's easy to forget to check some areas especially if they're something you don't use and forget about, maybe I should make a checklist but I'd probably forget something. 

[Matthew White]

Just seen that's also available in the Preferences Menu which may explain why every theme you try is black text, I suspect your option there is set to black. The cross interaction that can occur between these settings and theme settings can cause confusion and problems sometimes, both for a theme creator and the user.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Matthew White

[Starship Krupa]

Thanks, Matthew, you are, as always, the theme master.

Yes, the color preferences override and its unintended consequences.

I tried reverting to the default colors in Preferences, but it still came up black, so I don't know what's going on. I'll mess with Control Text and see what's going on.

Is there a way to give control of all colors back to the themes once the user has started customizing them in Preferences? I thought that choosing one of the presets might do that, but perhaps not.

[sjoens]

1. Once you have Preferences Colors right for your theme, save it, save it as a color set. Then if the colors change later on you can reload the color set from Preferences.

2. Some Take Lane features are missing from TE. The notes box, the track name background, & the spacer to the left of the take lane to name a few.

[Matthew White]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Is there a way to give control of all colors back to the themes once the user has started customizing them in Preferences? I thought that choosing one of the presets might do that, but perhaps not.

I believe that simply selecting the theme to use is supposed to override colors set in preferences if settings for these colors exist in the theme but that's not always the case and sometimes I find colors sticking from preferences and have to change the theme to another and then back again or sometimes they won't un-stick until I restart Cakewalk. As you may know, Cakewalks GUI was never meant to be customized so I very much suspect this is another side effect of that.

[Starship Krupa]

On 8/10/2019 at 6:21 AM, Matthew White said:

the text can be changed in the editor under: Track View / Control Text and Values

Dang, not on my system.

I found a setting in Preferences/Colors for Track View Control Text and Values and that didn't budge it, then I opened up TE and tried it there and no go, so I went through everything in Track View root level that was black and one at a time changed them to garish neon colors and the only ones I got visible action on were track names. Which leads me to seriously wonder what the heck the rest of them even do. Now I have this dummy test theme with some wild colors in it that don't seem to affect anything. It's called ClrTst.

Hey, maybe we could have a St. Stupid's Day challenge next April, a competition to see who can change the most things in Theme Editor without their having any visible effect on Cakewalk itself. I feel like I could be a contender. Seriously, I changed half a dozen colors in the Track View from coal black to '80's nu wave and got a single visible result.

I'm stuck with magic Nancy Drew spy writing that you have to swipe across with the cursor in order to read unless I can figure out how to change it.

What color is it on everyone else's systems? I swear I thought that it was white or at least grey at one point on my system but I haven't tried using that area in such a long time.

[Colin Nicholls]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

What color is [take lane note text]  on everyone else's systems? I swear I thought that it was white or at least grey at one point on my system but I haven't tried using that area in such a long time. 

It's white (on charcoal) on mine, when using my current version of Polar Blue 2019. I then switched between Blue Aston, Mercury, and Tungsten and the text color was unchanged.

For what it's worth, I'm using the Pref>Color>Preset of "Normal" but as soon as I save and close the Pref dialog, and then go back in, the preset name is "Normal*" (note the addition of the asterisk) so I suspect that there is an attempt to show that some colors are overridden by the theme? The priority of colors between a "theme" and a "color pref preset" is murky...

[Matthew White]

Shame it didn't work for you, did you hit 'Apply' in preferences,  try changing between themes, close and open Cakewalk and do a lucky dance? lol. I had to do most of these when I was checking which item it was for you before the theme color would override the preferences setting for me.

Like Colin, mine is also set to white in preferences with the 'Normal' preset.

There certainly are plenty of colors that don't appear to change anything, maybe they did once but not anymore, the same goes for some images, I always change them in my themes though so it's easy to find any new items that may get added in a Cakewalk update by simply selecting the 'Unmodified' tab in the editor.

[sjoens]

4 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

For what it's worth, I'm using the Pref>Color>Preset of "Normal" but as soon as I save and close the Pref dialog, and then go back in, the preset name is "Normal*" (note the addition of the asterisk) so I suspect that there is an attempt to show that some colors are overridden by the theme? The priority of colors between a "theme" and a "color pref preset" is murky...

Asterisk by color name means you changed a color from it's default set. Saving the colorset with a new name makes it easier to identify.

1 hour ago, Matthew White said:

There certainly are plenty of colors that don't appear to change anything, maybe they did once but not anymore, the same goes for some images,

The default color sets are carryovers from pre-X days when all colors could be changed. X series removed some colors from user edits while still being listed in Preferences causing confusion & frustration. Even so, a user could still load a colorset from a pre-X version into an X version and regain some of those changes... with mixed results.

https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Dialogs2.075.html

Note: If you customize a color in the Preferences dialog box, it will override the corresponding color in the UI theme (see Customization - Themes). If you change the UI theme, any custom colors will be lost, and the corresponding UI theme colors will be used instead. Be sure to save any custom colors as a color preset if you don't want to lose them when switching UI themes.

The underlined part is not always true.

Track View Control Text and Values affects Take Lane notes text. In my current theme it's YELLOW regardless of what theme I pick.  TE says it's WHITE but Preferences says it's YELLOW. In this case Preferences overrides TE and it cannot be changed in TE. Follow the text in bold above.

Edited August 14, 2019 by sjoens

[Matthew White]

58 minutes ago, sjoens said:

In this case Preferences overrides TE and it cannot be changed in TE.

I did manage to change it in the TE but the preferences setting seems very sticky and I had to close and reopen Cakewalk and switch between a number of themes before the theme setting would override the preferences setting so definitely worth changing it in preferences and saving a colorset as you said.

[SteveC]

FWIW, when I originally did the Polar Blue theme a few years back I also exported a matching *.clr file to cover the things I couldn't get the way I wanted using the Theme Editor.    Just throwing it out there...

 

[user 905133]

On 8/14/2019 at 2:20 PM, sjoens said:

Track View Control Text and Values affects Take Lane notes text. In my current theme it's YELLOW regardless of what theme I pick.

I got this, too.  until I changed theme, exited Cakewalk, started it up again, and reopened the file.  This is all new to me, I like exploring, not sure this is useful info, thought I'd share because I want to get into customization that works best for my vision and appreciate the discussion.  Seems to me there some things are inherited, overwritten, etc. It is unclear how each parameter is handled, but I am just wondering if what seems to be random (colors sticking?) are actually a consistent function of when (and where) specific colors/elements are saved/overwritten/loaded. 

Just wondering out loud because this topic fascinates the explorer in me.

 

 

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by User 905133
images deleted to save storage space

[Terry Kelley]

It would be nice if we could get away from the overall black/gray background. It does appear unchangeable at this point.

[Starship Krupa]

Hoo doggies. It looks like a certain amount of rain dancing must take place before the color can change. I thank you all for looking into this. Now of course I fear that the lurid color changes I tried in my test theme will start leaping out.

I wonder if the color only changes if the parameter gets called in a certain order, like it has to be read by another part of the program before the change will show up in the Take Notes space.

All I've been doing is the standard sequence of: Change color in test theme, switch CbB to Mercury, save test theme, switch to test theme in CbB, hit Apply, observe result, repeat.

If there's some other dance that needs to be done in CbB besides just hitting Apply, my efforts were for naught (well, they were for naught anyway).

 

[Starship Krupa]

See next message for final outcome....

Edited August 15, 2019 by Starship Krupa

[Starship Krupa]

Okay, I've narrowed down the recipe.

Track View Control Text and Values does affect Take Lane notes text, both via themes and via color prefs.

However, in order to see the result of making a change, you must close your current project, then open it again (or open another one).

Apparently, some color settings are only read at the time CbB opens a project, not when a theme is applied or when they are selected in Color prefs., which is good to know.

 (00FEFE blue and FF9900 orange look good on the black background, BTW)

[sjoens]

Some change only after closing & reopening Cakewalk.

Edited August 15, 2019 by sjoens

[user 905133]

2 hours ago, sjoens said:

Some change only after closing & reopening Cakewalk.

Yes!  Also, I just did some tests with Notes Browser and found some theme colors change (1) when a theme is selected, (2)  when a file is reopened, and (3) when a Screen Set is changed.