Is anyone interested in using this? And if so, a couple of volunteers to test it would be good. It’s a module I made for myself to change the colour of the cable that you’re currently dragging (only while the cable is disconnected, to attempt to minimise interference with other keyboard use) using the 1-9 keys on your keyboard, but figured that if others are interested then I might submit it to the library.
You can also set it to latch to the last selected colour so that it doesn’t cycle through the colours. The small indicator light shows the current (while dragging) or next cable colour. I know there are currently much more powerful options (e.g. Count Modula’s Cable Palette, or others that use multiple modules), but nothing has really suited the way that I work, or feel too complicated (I like the idea of the new colour picker in the pop-up menus, but usually I think about the colour after I’ve clicked a port, and being on a laptop, I prefer not to have to right-click anything).
I want to keep it simple, so I don’t really intend on adding any further features.
The colours are the same used by Rack, and can be edited in your settings.json file (search for “cableColors”). I don’t know why you would want this many, but the module supports up to 9 colours.
Looks great imho, maybe the background color should be different? Now Black and white cables are hard to see or it should come with a kind of “default color setting” for this module?
I’m interested for sure, and I would like to test it
That looks very interesting!
I use a 12+1 color palette to color cables according to their function. For color assignment I am currently using STROKE from stoermelder. Each cable function (or cable color, respectively) is assigned a letter that I defined in STROKE. If I want to color a wire, I point to a connector with the mouse and press the corresponding button, e.g. ‘G’ for GATE etc.
EDIT 2022-02-09: In the meantime, an awesome, handy module by INKLEN (Nick Feisst) is to come, which makes the management of VCV Rack cable colors a lot easier and clearer. The above palette and its keyboard mapping are also included. Stay tuned!
EDIT 2022-03-09: The plugin is now available in the VCV library!
Yeah - the panel colour is never going to be perfect for every user’s colour scheme. That cable display is really more of just an embellishment on the module panel. Ideally you won’t ever look to this for reference (at least after using it for a little while), and the module can just sit in the background. I don’t really use the light, either, but I’ve added that so that people can more easily figure out what the module is doing internally.
Aah. . . so the gui is just a picture and not the actual used colors?
I thought it would represent the color scheme used in the settings.json, which would be cool imho.
I think that the printed colors on the module panel are ‘only’ design (which I think is super cool by the way), not functional and do not reflect the current palette. The assignment of the digits to the colors is not shown either.
Perhaps it would be worth considering to
increase the number of possible colors to about 16
also allow assignable letters instead of just fixed digits
display current palette (from settings.json) on panel
display colors on the module panel in progressing brightness
Thanks for the suggestions. I may change my mind, but for now I’m not trying to have this plug-in be the Swiss Army Knife of cable colouring - it’s just a very simple way to switch between a low number of colours, and one that I’ve found better fits my workflow. I also would prefer to keep the code simple.
I do like the idea of “g” for gate, etc - but I’m not sure I want to add complexity to the module to accommodate this.
I would finddifferent background very usefull as the default VCV colors have black
so at least this should be visible on the initial load of the module imho,
some user could be thinking it is a bug of the module
if they can’t see all colors.
Perhaps the cables could be displayed against a gradient background, so that no matter what colors are displayed, some portion of the graphic will always be distinguishable from the background.
Not for me, they don’t. The ones I’ve shown in the screenshot are the default colours. Perhaps you’ve edited, or have a module modify, the colours you’re seeing?
I’m not fond of using a gradient on the panel background, and a very subtle one would be close to a solid colour anyway. I think that it kind of misses the point in any case - that users won’t really look at the module.
Just for reference with regards to the background, here is an image with more cables, including black and white.
Today I’ve increased the limit to 16 colours, and while I don’t plan on adding any menus to edit mappings, I’ve also added saving/loading key mappings with the module. You can export a preset, edit them manually (it’s just an array of the key codes), and import them back again. So, technically you can map keys other than 1-9.
