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Get current color theme (Dark Gray or Light)

Aurel B

Hi All,

Since latest release, Virtuoso starts in dark theme by default.
(I get that it's nice to introduce the new features, but I find it a bit intrusive for some users.)

However, some of my interfaces had hardcoded colors which are really hard to look at in the new dark theme.

What is the proper way to determine the current color theme ("Dark Gray" or Light)?

Or (even better) is there a way to determine current theme colors (title, body, primary, secondary, accent, etc.)?

I read about "~/.cadence/ui/theme.json" but I don't have this file.

Thanks,

Aurel

  • Andrew Beckett

    Hi Aurel,

    There's a CCR (3259072) for two new SKILL functions (the existing functions are private) to determine the current theme (color scheme) or to determine whether in dark mode. These have only relatively recently been checked in, and I don't see it integrated in the upcoming ISR4 branch, so it may be later than that. I'm trying to find out.

    Anyway, much of the time the color challenges I've seen have been if you use icons - if so, you can put a variant icon in a subdirectory "dark" under where your icons are loaded from and it will then switch to the same-named file under the dark directory when in dark mode.

    If it's for other manipulation of the UI (e.g. HTML fields that use colors), you'll probably need the new API when it arrives.

    Regards,

    Andrew

  • Andrew Beckett
    in reply to Andrew Beckett

    Also, the theme.json file you mentioned won't exist unless you've set the preference in Options->User Preferences (i.e. if it's still at the dark mode default).

    Andrew

  • Aurel B
    in reply to Andrew Beckett

    That's unfortunate.

    But knowing there is a private function, I was able to find it, thanks! Wink

    I'll use that until a public one is released.

    Have a nice day,

    Aurel

  • Andrew Beckett
    in reply to Aurel B

    Aurel,

    The fix is schedule for IC25.1 ISR5 (currently 17th April), and the two functions will be hiGetStyleColorScheme and hiIsInDarkColorScheme

    Andrew

  • Aurel B
    in reply to Andrew Beckett

    Hi Andrew,

    Thanks for the info, it matches my findings, I will check if it is callable or fallback to the private one.

    This raises other questions : 
    - Looking at `hiGetStyleColorScheme` output, it feels like it is made to support other themes in the future (or the possibility to make custom ones). Is it the case?

    - I made dedicated CSS files for each theme, mostly to use with `hiCreateHypertextField`.
      However, I was not able to use external CSS files within HTML displayed by the field.
      My workaround is to write the CSS content inside <head><style> tags, is there a better solution for that?

    Thanks,

    Aurel

  • Andrew Beckett
    in reply to Aurel B
    Aurel B said:
    Looking at `hiGetStyleColorScheme` output, it feels like it is made to support other themes in the future (or the possibility to make custom ones). Is it the case?

    There is an additional experimental/preliminary theme (which has higher contrast and is darker) so the idea is that this API caters for future additional refinements. However, there's no plan for custom themes (it's quite hard ensuring things look OK even with our own additional theme(s) without having to cope with custom themes which may have colours that don't work alongside text in the main UI or icons and so on).

    Aurel B said:
    However, I was not able to use external CSS files within HTML displayed by the field.
      My workaround is to write the CSS content inside <head><style> tags, is there a better solution for that?

    I'm not aware of the external CSS file support not working within the HTML - might be a Qt limitation or some security restriction (not sure why) but nobody seems to have reported it. I can't think of a better approach than you're using - if this is important to you though, I suggest  creating a support case (maybe it can be enhanced to allow external CSS files).

    Andrew

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