Changing the exterior color of the main window

[Guest]

Ed and Pat, How hard is it to change the dark grey color that dominates the window color? I was thinking of changing it to match the color of the highlight blue that is used in Aqua when a menu item is hilighted to see how that would look. This blue can be seen here in the NeoOffice/J screenshoots lnks. Or to a lighter shade of grey used in MAC OS X Jaquar menu bar.

http://homepage.mac.com/sardisson/neoj/neoj11aqua_about.jpg

[Guest]

Ok, looks like I posted too soon. So as to not waste Ed and Pat's time, I am currently wading through this:

http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=995&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60&sid=3e932230130f1531be18a1b42fbe4c92

But I guess the answer is no, or someone would have already done it. However, if someone could point me in the right direction, I'm willing to play with the colors/code, but if "hardcoded" means impossible, well then, OK. I'll try to be more patient. Some nice mock-ups in the thread link above.

[sardisson]

I think what you want to do can be done (if we're talking the same background color), see NeoOffice/J Appearance Customization in the wiki.

Smokey

[Guest]

Thanks Smokey.

I looked around last night in the files in ~/Lib/NeoOfficeJ with HexEdit and saw the key colors are the menu bar and other "bars" (i.e. Navigation, Objects, Tool, Main, etc.) and window background color Dark Grey 8-bit actual = 192 for all 3 (R-G-B) values= C0C0C0 and the dark blue menu hilighting as 8-bit actual = 0 0 128 --> 8-bit hex 00 00 80, R-G-B.

Wanted to do selective surgery vs. masectamy though so I'll check out the link. thanks for the lead. Don't know if to change color code values there in the folder above or somewhere else like the Mac OS or Resources folders in the app itself (i.e. after showing package contents).

Does look daunting for a dabbler...

[jakeOSX]

so if i had broadband atm i would have tried this first.. but..

seems to me that if you downloaded the oo.o code and did a search (yes i know that is through a lot of code) for the color codes of the program that finding which files dictate them should be fairly easy to locate.

then again, i am just talking off my head here too.

Anyway, the problem being that since (if?) these are hardcoded, it would be another file added to the neo build...

and as another resource, i suppose we could always ask on the oo.o forums.

that being said, if that lib file actually affects the color of the program, it might be a quick hack.

-j, who will have time again soon, i swear

[Guest]

Jake said:

"that being said, if that lib file actually affects the color of the program, it might be a quick hack"

Exactly, easier to harder is the way I like to go. Something tells me though it's not that simple editng those files in that directory or someone would have surely done it by now (but once I check out the link that may be exactly what it is but to a lesser extent).

And just to clarify, the "Lib" I cited above stands for "Library" folder. (it appears to be Preference folder of files for the app itself as opposed to in the System Preferences .plist/prefs file folder that traditional Mac apps use, but I understand since its a windows port)
Not sure why its not in Applications Support Folder.

Many of the files in folder(s) in the ~/Library/NeoOficeJ folder are files ending in .soc., .soh, .sop, etc.(i.e. web.soc) A common trait in those files is the term "color-table" near the beginning of the file and at the end of the file. Maybe these files are for the icons? I dunno.

There are also many, many .dylb files (Unixy type?) with file name beginning with "lib"-rest_of_file_name.dylb but I hope I don't have to change all those in the Mac OS and Resources folders.

Gonna try that link first in the thread 2 above so at least the Windoze look is improved but then also, with time, plan to play with a copy of those other files to see what affect it has.

This should hold a lot of people over until the official NeoOfficeJ GUI facelift that Ed and Dan are working on where the colors are actually able to be replaced with the fancy Aqua color/combos(i.e. that create the striped effect) or pictures? for menu and other "bar" and window backgrounds in the app.

I'd like to retire early and go work for Apple as a second career but alas, 1) they won't let me without penalty and 2) I'm on the right coast. (satellite office maybe?)

[jakeOSX]

the link is for the background on the window, not the background for the toolbars, etc. it does help, btw.

i think simply changing the toolbars to white would make it appear much more mac like, even if the icons stay the same (though we have a team working on that )

i'd like to work for apple too, but only if i can be director of using-apple's-programmers-to-make-the-world-safe-for-democracy, or something like that.

[Guest]

OK, thanks for your input. Time to play.

And I have a confession to make, even though I've been using NOJ 0.7 for a while sparingly, when I have to open those .doc files, I normally go the X11 route and OO_o since it launches and runs SOOOOOOOO much faster on the 800Mhz iMac with only 256MB RAM running OS X 10.2.3 or the OS X native AbiWord (of course that can't open the .xls files).

[jakeOSX]

0.7!
=)
well, there have been speed improvements since then, i'd suggest the 1.1 beta.

[Guest]

Hey, I happen to really like the old brown ship icon!!!!!!

Even though I sometimes go, "Hey, now why did I go tinker with that and hose my system again, I should know better by now" I'm normally an "If it ain't broke, dont fix it" kinda guy. I measure what I'm missing by not upgrading vs. hassles caused by some upgrades. Not talking NOJ here, but more OS X. I'm sure 1.1 beta would run much faster. I'm content where I am, got a real stable install with lots of tweaks to simulate the newer OS. Can't emulate speed I guess, however so I should consider upgrading and more importantly, adding RAM, but when Tiger comes out, will probably get a new iBook and leave the iMac alone.

OK, but enough of this, back to (some) real work!

[ovvldc]

[Guest]

Well, after seeing the results of this

<a href="http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1209&sid=41b1549fac59535968a88ddbf80a2c23">NeoOfficeC_Thread</a>

I realize how late to the game I am and how trivial my tinkering just is. Looks like the X look is well under control. Surprised it was unstable however. I thought the days of crashing Classic were over with the sweet OS X goodness. ; ) Not complaining, I use both (sorry linux and others) and OS X is the best in the world right now.

Got nowhere last night except for a little experiment where I changed the Light Gray="#c0c0c0" code to "#e6e6ff" (Blue Gray) in the "standard.soc" file in the users folder in Contents folder of the app itself and after relauncing the Light Gray square in the color table in the color table under the Tools --> Options --> NeoOfiiceJ ---> color was now Blue Gray instead of Light gray (Standard windows gray color of the main window).

How to get from this to actually having it change the default window color I have no clue. Tinkered with the color table setting in the color option and got nowhere.

Btw, ver. 0.7 doesn't have the "Appearance" option listed in the appearance link above (Tools --> Options --> NeoOfiiceJ) so I could not change the window color to Gray 10% using that method. Tried the stated method above instead. I did change the font from Arial to Lucinde Grande but either it didn't stick after I clicked on the green checkmark and relaunched or I just can't tell the difference.

And you're right about changing the ship icon back. In fact, it's the only icon showing in the resources folder as an .ico(n)? file.

Looks like I'm wasing my time since the Aqua GUI project is moving so all is good.

[sardisson]

[Guest]

"Hmm, apparently HTML is not on.
Code:

text is the BBCode (clicking on the BBCode link on the reply page will give you more details). "

Oops. Sorry about that. Yeah, it does say it's on but maybe it's just my browser. Even though I'm forced to use the beige box in my other life, I minimize usage of the blue e.Thanks for the proper BBCode formatting tip.

How's this?

NeoOfficeC_Thread

"Things changed a great deal between 0.7/0.8 and 1.1, so that might be the source of the color problem. That definitely the case with the font; you still had to replace "Andale Sans UI" in 0.7/0.8."

OK. Thanks for clearing that one up. I'll change it properly tonight. Tough to change it from Arial if I was never looking at it in the first place! hehe

Looks like I won't be much help until I upgrade but I'll keep play'in anyway. I've been reading the archives and will try some of the speed/usage tips for the old dog ver. 0.7 about Memory settings, blank template docs in the Dock and on the Desktop and keeping a help window open so closing the last doc doesn't shut the app down avoiding having to relaunch and fall asleep, but the normal "help" app in Jag *shudder" makes anything look fast! ; ) so hope Neo help doesn't run through that.

Really, once Neo is open it's not much slower than X11 OO_o except for the drop down menus that are white first and then gray but I read up on why that is.I had discovered the work around for the blank windows not redrawing again until active a while ago on my own. When in doubt I tend to just start clicking everywhere even though that's potentially very dangerous!

Not having to relaunch is nice but didn't realize what a CPU hog Neo is but agian it's better I'm sure in 1.1b.

[pluby]