Tools to use: The IDE Itself!

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Most of the IDE can be edited with itself!
To do this first go into the IDE preferences panel turn on UI

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Then you can use the project browser to get at the pieces UI element of the IDE itself:

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After you've edited the piece of IDE that you want to modify, you must explicitly save it's stack file by control-clicking or right clicking on it's stack in the project browser and selecting Save from that menu, otherwise the changes will be lost when you quit the IDE.

[richmond62]

Is that possible with script-only stacks that seem to somehow generate stacks on-the-fly when they are "called" in the IDE?

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Is that possible with script-only stacks that seem to somehow generate stacks on-the-fly when they are "called" in the IDE?

You mean like the revTools, revMenuBar (and it's Toolbar group), Property Inspector, etc., etc.?
No, BUT you CAN edit the behavior scripts that generate them! It's probably best to do that on a copy in a text editor outside of the IDE.

The nice thing is can also experiment with these temporary stacks that those scripts create, changing properties. colors and such without worrying about doing any permanent damage. I was doing that earlier today, trying to adjust revTools palette for a script that's toggling darkMode on and off, the default's make it hard to see some of the tools, so I have it changing some colors in tool groups that are in that palette, just trying setting different values right from the message box to see how they looked.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

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This is being modified by a darkMode script that sets properties on the in-memory stack that is the script generated revTools palette, eventually some of that darkMode script should be integrated into the script that generates to stack, but I can play around with the look of it until I'm satisfied without ever modifying the revTools scripts..

[richmond62]

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I wonder of the contrast could not be greater.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

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I wonder of the contrast could not be greater.

I like yours better, can you post the code for making the widget icons fill white?

The "classic" controls are a bigger issue because they're RGB png image files and they're platform AND platform version specific... I'm thinking we could substitute some Generic SVGs icons for those that would be the same on all IDE platforms?

[richmond62]

Oh "Sugar" . . .

That was just me playing 'silly buggers' with GIMP.

Currently at my school as "going live" (again, again, again) from next week.

Will see what I can do when I get home.

Currently in front of a 2006 iMac that can only run LC 8.

BUT, I do notice in the Application browser that the widget icons on the revTools palette in 8.2.0 (dp 2)

can be looked at in the Inspector and their colours can be changed:
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[richmond62]

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I have no way of knowing, until I get home, if that is as simple as that is for LC 9.6.3.

[richmond62]

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LC 9.6.3.

Although I cannot find one or two components . . .

However, doing save stack "revTools" in the messageBox does NOT make it
stick between launches.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

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LC 9.6.3.

Although I cannot find one or two components . . .

However, doing save stack "revTools" in the messageBox does NOT make it
stick between launches.

Right, that's because the revTools.livecodescript file is a script-only stack now, it generates it's UI stack "on-the-fly"entirely via script. You have to edit the script-only file to make lasting changes, the revTools you see on screen is only a temporarily generated stack in memory.

But changing properties with Project Browser (or the Application Browser if you prefer) and then creating a corresponding script that does the same change, is basically the method that I used for creating a script that produced my version, and placed that script in commands in the Home stack script (ie. on IDEDarkMode \ IDELightMode, along with the macTools command for macOS window frames which works well in IDE startup as you never see lightMode window frames) which then gets applied/saved in a preferences file property that IDE user can toggle.

The widget section might be bit more tricky because widgets can be added and removed "on the fly" so that's at least one other script that has to be modified.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I'd really like to redo those "classic controls" icons as SVG, with icons that are platform generic! The icons that are in there now on macOS are from like MacOS X 10.4, about 17years old, lol!

[xAction]

Project browser
Select revTools
Right click
Standalone Application Settings
Copy Files
Check "Copy Reference Files" use the default folder it provides
Project Browser
Select revTools
Build stand alone
Check the resources folder

There's all the .png files that make up the UI
However...that's going to be platform specific it seems and is mess trying to find where the files go because they didn't all come from one folder to start with so head on down to

/"C:\Program Files\RunRev\LiveCode Community 9.6.1\Toolset\resources\supporting_files\themes\"

Or whatever the equivalent of that is in the bundle on Mac.
All the folders in there have pngs.
Write yourself a script to rip through all the folders and do some image processing on it. Like with imagemagick

Code: Select all

magick mogrify *.png -grayscale Rec709Luminance *.png

Or if you have photoshop you can probably make a droplet to do it quick.

[richmond62]

do some image processing

I don't think that is what Paul is looking for: he is looking for a new set of icons altogether for this section of
the toolBar:
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Which DO look as though they have been hanging around since the 'aqua' of MacOS X.
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[richmond62]

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"Just for fun" here's a screen shot of the revTools palette in LC 10.0.0 (dp 1)

[richmond62]

make it stick between launches

I am just downloading LC 7.1.4 (which will not run on my MacOS 12 machine), and I shall unpack the app package either here,
or shove it across to one of my 10.7.5 machines and do it there.

I'll suck out the aqua buttons and "fart around" with them . . . and maybe those could be used?

Certainly the easiest way, as I demonstarted earlier, to de-aqua those buttons is to grey-scale them.

[xAction]

Aqua is really pleasant to look at it, like breasts for GUIs.

[richmond62]

One way to deal with the widget icons [which, as far as I am aware are currently generated from an embedded font in the IDE]
would be to export them (i.e. ALL the font items) as png images with their colours set the way we want them to end up in
the revTools palette, and then reimplement the revTools palette (or, possibly, a dedicated Widget palette) using those images
as buttons rather than the way things are done at present.

[richmond62]

That license does seem to suggest that a commercial user might have difficulty, legally, handing that font on
if it were wrapped up in something else.

So . . . it might be worth considering making Widget buttons be images.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

That license does seem to suggest that a commercial user might have difficulty, legally, handing that font on
if it were wrapped up in something else.

So . . . it might be worth considering making Widget buttons be images.

I'm perfectly capable of creating some basic SVG Path icons from scratch, in illustrator and getting them into SVGIcon path widget as a string. That's how I did that align palette, there's no images in that stack, it's all SVG Paths that can scale to any size. But if we can find suitable GPL compatible SVGs already made up then tat saves some work.

Yes that's what I mean. Basically we just need generic SVG set for the "classic controls" set and I know where the PNGs are in the IDE (one version of the folder for each desktop platform).

[mwieder]

Whew! Finally managed to register for this board after disabling the ad blocker.

Anyway, for PowerTools I opted for actual images of the control objects rather than svg avatars. For each control I create the control, take a snapshot of it, resize it to fit into a nominal 40x40 pixel box, and place the snapshot in a datagrid. That way the image is consistent with the native operating system and can appear different on different platforms. Plus it saves having to create a unique svg avatar for each control.