"Diehard" Colors theme

Hi,

I’ve done a colors theme for Ardour to go with my default ‘Diehard’ AV Linux MX Edition GTK theme, it may be absolutely hideous to some of you but if you use Ardour in AVL-MXE you may enjoy Ardour appearing like it is simply (the best) part of the Operating System.

I don’t do a lot of MIDI work or hardcore automation of tracks so if there is something about the colors that affect actual usability please tell me, if you just hate the colors in general maybe just keep that to yourself… :wink: If enough folks like it maybe the Ardour gods will include it… :man_shrugging:

Screenshot: http://bandshed.net/images/screenshots/Ardour-Diehard-revised-4.png

*This post has been updated with a newer theme version ‘diehard3’

The colors file is here… assuming you are using the preferred and official Ardour bundle from Ardour.org you will want to extract the ‘diehard-ardour.colors’ zip to /opt/Ardour-6.X.X/share/themes/

Once copied into your theme folder it should be selectable in Edit–>Preferences–>Colors.

Colors file zipped here: http://bandshed.net/files/diehard3-ardour.colors.zip
Uncompressed file here (right-click on the link to ‘Save-As’):
http://bandshed.net/files/diehard3-ardour.colors

*NOTE: Ardour’s custom color palette for track colors is not part of the theme colors so you may want to make some of your own custom track colors that aren’t so pastel colored and go with the theme better.

ArdourPalette

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I actually really like it! Nicely done. I still feel like your manual PDF could do with having white backgrounds other than for the title and end pages :wink:

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And for the compilers out there, gtk2_ardour/themes/ in your Ardour git clone directory…

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Hi! Bless you for even looking at the Manual!! :angel: I’m not really sure how easy it is to apply different BGs to individual pages in LibreOffice, I’ll have to look closer sometime.

Thanks for the comments and sharing the other places to put the colors file… I have not compiled Ardour in many years… I used to add my own fader PNG’s and compile Ardour 2 so it didn’t have Fader belts but I gave up on that and they hardcoded the belts into the UI anyway…

In this situation the normal practice is to make the cover pages as a separate document and then use PDF arranger or similar to add them in afterwards. For all I know it is possible to use different color backgrounds in Libreoffice but having supplied files to professional printers in the past if the cover pages are color (vs B/W insides) and perhaps using different paper stock, it just makes sense to have them separate.

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Hi, GMaq! Looking powerful! :slight_smile:
A theme preoccupied user must have test
Could you upload the theme file somehow without .zip compression. I can’t unzip for unknown reason…?
Edit: no worry! I’ve download the second time - a normal flight :slight_smile: Sorry!

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Hi @cooltehno

Sure, here it is uncompressed: http://bandshed.net/files/diehard3-ardour.colors

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okk! Thanks anyway!:slight_smile:

You are the theme Master!! Be gentle… :slightly_smiling_face:

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Well done. Another theme to be included upstream with Ardour, except the name perhaps.

A7
I woke up this morning,
D7/9 . . . A7/b13
and Ardour was blue.
D7 . . . D7/b9
'woke up this morning,
A7 . . . F#7
Ardour was all blueeee…

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@x42 Thanks! And a new blues tune as well!!?

BTW the original name came from here: Die Hard 4.0 GTK theme - Gnome-look.org

I used that for a default theme way back in the day before GTK3 and then appropriated the color scheme and paraphrased the name for new GTK3 system themes I created… It is not a reference to the series of Bruce Willis movies…lol.

Feel free to change the name to whatever you like though… Just clarifying the origins.

Nah, just first two bars of a common A major blues. Minor didn’t feel appropriate for this nice theme :slight_smile:

…will have to brainstrom about the name. Maybe derived from “gnome-look”: Dwarvenair.
That’s in line with other Ardour theme names (Ableton → Cainville, S1 → UnaStudio etc).

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That looks awesome! I’ll definitely try it :slight_smile:

Fairyfocus or Goblingape would be my suggestions…

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Dwarfish, or Elvish, surely…?

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How about ‘mellon’… which means friend in Elvish (as any self-respecting LoTR geek would know)… and I am a friend of Ardour… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

On second thought even ‘melon’ works with with the orange vaguely canteloupe-coloured highlights… :thinking: Maybe ‘Mellonhead’ should be the name… :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I would change two things:

  1. The item “midi note selected outline” - to white (more noticeable IMO):

  2. The transparency of the “G”-“E”-modes are more distinguishable when “G” - is filled of color, “E” - is transparent.
    Edit>Preferences>Theme>Transparency:

editable region” - move the slider to the left;
midi frame base” - move the slider to the right

In “G”-mode we are working with “blocks” - so we don’t need clearly looking grid inside the region;
in “E”-mode we need the orientation for notes - so the grid would be good clearly looking:

it’s only my subjective workflow feelling:)

P.S. A distro-oriented theme is an interesting idea. One monolith style :slight_smile:

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@cooltehno

The wise master has spoken! Great ideas, I will look into it tomorrow and post an updated version. Thanks, that is exactly the sort of advice I was looking for!

Haha, if I could make my 2 main programs (both Ardour and Cinelerra) match the system theme I could die a happy man!

Suggestions from @cooltehno have been included and an updated ‘diehard2’ has been put in the first post.

With a great pleasure!))

My version of the theme name “ultra-celandine”. May be too crazy, but just my associations…

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