Five-Minute Tutorial: Change The Background Color Of EDI

Today's tutorial could probably be called a One-Minute Tutorial, since it's so quick. This is something that came across our internal expert alias, and I figured it's something that most people may not know about. Did you know that you can change the background color of your Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) design window?

Here's how. In your EDI session, enter the following command:

    setLayerPreference bg -color {<color_name>|color_value}

For example:

    setLayerPreference bg -color white

To set it back to the default, use:

    setLayerPreference bg -color black

You can also use color values, like #000000 (black), #ffffff (white), #ff0000 (red), etc.

If you prefer to use color names, like I do, how do you know what names are legal? You can find a list in a file called rgb.txt, which for sun4v machines, should be in the /usr/X/lib/X11 directory, and for lnx86 machines, should be in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 directory. Ask your favorite IT person if you need help finding this file. I found mine to have some color names to rival that of the local paint store. (Papaya Whip, anyone?)

Why would you want to change the background color of EDI? Well, although most people are used to the black background, some folks might be used to a white background based on other tools they have used, or a white background might be better for printing out a snapshot of the design, depending on how you print or plot. And some folks just like to be unique and have colors different than everyone else. To those people, I say: don't ever change. You are the ones who make the world interesting and fun!

Thanks to Susan Zhao for the original Cadence Online Support solution.

- Kari Summers