When I got my hands on Kaleidoscope 1.5 for the first time, Oynx was my favorite scheme off the bat. My favorite element was the black and yellow racing stripes in windows. But, it reminded me of Construction signs, not the stone Oynx. So I decided to make myself a scheme based around a highway metaphor, with the same pattern for windows. Eventually I changed it to alerts, because you don't see construction signs all over the road.
Dark Highway has many great features:
･ Not made from Scheme Converter, therefore it is smaller and properly made
･ Support for 1bit, 2 bit, and 4 bit monitors. (More on this later...)
･ Optional custom icons
･ Cool 3D window widgets
･ Support for Kaleidoscope 1.7.1 features
Dark Highway Blue -
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Dark Highway Red -
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I authored nearly all of theese schemes, but I got some "inspiration" from:
･ Oynx, by Fred Bass
･ Sherbet, by Fred Bass
･ Red Plastic, by Steve Levinson
･ Blue Plastic, by Justin J. Cooper
･ Amadeus, by Lloyd Wood
Many kudos and thanks goes out to the talented authors of these color schemes!! Now, on with the documentationﾉ
There are two different versions of Dark Highway. They are red and blue variants. You may have downloaded one of them, or both. Nearly every widget is either red or blue, pick your favorite color. You will probably develop a favourite.
To use:
You should know how to do this by now.
To use these schemes, put the color scheme file(s) in the following directory:
System Folder:Extensions:Kaleidoscope Color Schemes:
Then, open the Kaleidoscope control panel, and select the new scheme from the list. (Dark Highway Blue or Dark Highway Red). You can remove the files from the Kaleidoscope Color Schemes folder at any time you wish. (If by some freak of nature you didnﾕt fall in love with these schemes! ;-)
For the full Dark Highway experience:
System Font: Espi Sans, or Espi Sans Bold looks best in my opinion
System Font size: 10 Point
Background Windows Color (Beige): (I suggest Window Monkey, but if you don't have it, this color looks good.)
Hue: 60 Degrees
Saturation: 100%
Lightness: 90.00%
If you would like to use custom icons as well, I have included my own set. The files are called Dark Highway Blue Icons and Dark Highway Red Icons. They are plug-ins for Chris' Aaron/Kaleidoscope patch. You can get Chris' patch from http://www.datacomm.ch/darkeagl/. Apply these icons to Kaleidoscope.
Known Problems:
･DoubleScroll. These schemes has a problem with DoubleScroll. When you have both arrows, there is a line at the bottom which is OK. But when the thumb of the scroll bar is at the top or the bottom of the bar, the line is cut off. Workaround: None. Don't use DoubleScroll or live with it. I am planning to make a DoubleScroll enchanced version.
･ 4 bit color depth support. These schemes look very poor in 16 colors. This is because there is now way to directly edit for 16 color window support. The color falls through to brown instead of dark grey or black. The only way for me to change this, is to change the way the scheme looks in 8 bit, and I don't want to do that.
･ 2 bit and 1 bit support. It can be argued that these schemes actually look better in 4 colors and 2 colors. I've tried my hardest to provide full functionality, but Kaleidoscope has some bugs with black & white support for dark schemes. Menu's HAVE to be black text on white background. Checkboxes are inverted from what they should be. (I work around this by inverting the actual B&W checkboxes.) And the Finder header can't be white text on black background in most scenarios. I have amde these three items usable, but they are not how I wanted them to look.
･ MacOS 8. In a pop-up window (AKA: Tabs, Drawers) the resize icon is not drawn from Kaleidoscope, it is taken from the system. This is a missing feature in Kaleidoscope and will probably be fixed in a later version. (1.7.1 is the latest as of this writing.)
Special Thanks to everyone on the Kaleidoscope Mailing list for all their help, especially Albie Wong, Jim LeDuc, and Ed Deans.
These schemes are email-ware. If you like them and use them, send me an e-mail, letting me know what you think of them. If you don't like them, tell me what they need!
