Subject:    -3- How do I change the user interface's colors?
Date:  3 May 2002 18:00:00 PDT

  On IRIX, Priism uses the color scheme that's been selected
  for the SGI desktop.  You can change this scheme by selecting
  Desktop->Customize->Color Schemes from the Toolchest menu.
  (If you don't know where that is you should consult the SGI
  Desktop User's Guide at

    <http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=0650&db=bks&srch=&fname=/SGI_EndUser/Desktop_UG>

  Chapter 11 in particular has information on changing the desktop).
  Not all of the color schemes work equally well with Priism; typical
  problems are:  help buttons and function buttons have the same or
  similar colors, read-only text is not distinguishable from editable
  text, or the small arrows on pulldown menus to indicate a nested
  pulldown are not visible.  Predefined schemes that avoid all of these
  problems are Arizona, IndigoMagic, Inverness, Milan, RedGreenSafe, and
  Vancouver.


  On Linux and MacOSX or for changes on IRIX beyond what is possible
  by changing the desktop scheme, changes to the colors require
  editing X resources files.  Changes for an individual user can be
  stored in the .Xdefaults file in his or her home directory; changes
  for all users of a system can be stored in 

    /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/IVE

  (/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/IVE on IRIX).  Either for the personal
  or the system-wide ones, you would need to create the file if it
  was not already there.


  Below are listed the default colors resources used on Linux and
  MacOS X (these emulate the SGI IndigoMagic scheme with a gamma
  of 1.7).  As a brute force approach to modifying the colors,
  you could copy some or all of these resources specifications
  to the resource file and experiment with different values.
  Below all of the colors are colors are given with their RGB
  values in hexadecimal.  Colors can be set by name as well and
  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt (/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt on IRIX) lists
  names that are allowed.

    IVE*foreground: #000000
    IVE*background: #c1c1c1
    IVE*XmList.background: #999999
    IVE*XmPushButton.background: #999999
    IVE*XmDrawnButton.background: #999999
    IVE*XmRowColumn*OptionButton.background: #999999
    IVE*XmArrowButton.background: #c1c1c1
    IVE*XmText.background: #b98e8e
    IVE*XmScrolledWindow.XmText.background: #000000
    IVE*XmTextField.background: #b98e8e
    IVE*XmScrollBar.background: #999999
    IVE*XmScrollBar.foreground: #999999
    IVE*XmScale*foreground: #000000
    IVE*XmMenuShell*background: #c1c1c1
    IVE*XmMenuShell*XmToggleButton.selectColor: #000000
    IVE*highlightColor: #000000
    IVE*form*statusBar*foreground: #c1c1c1
    IVE*form*statusBar*troughColor: #b98e8e
    IVE*form*helpButton*background: #9f8484
    IVE*form*textLabel*background: #999999


  On IRIX, there are three other resources that can be used to
  modify the color scheme without working at the level of the
  colors for types of dialog items.  The first is IVE*useSchemes
  which you can use to tell Priism that it should not rely on the
  color schemes.  To do this you would enter

    IVE*useSchemes: none

  in the resource file.  The second is IVE*scheme which you can use
  to have Priism use a specific scheme without affecting the scheme
  used by other applications.  For instance, if you wanted to use
  the scheme defined in /usr/lib/X11/schemes/Milan for Priism but
  not for other applications, you would put

    IVE*scheme: /usr/lib/X11/schemes/Milan

  in the resource file.  The third resource controls which color
  from the color scheme is used on help buttons.  By default, Priism
  acts as if

    IVE*form*helpButton*background: SGI_DYNAMIC AlternateBackground1

  was specified in a resource file.  If you like a scheme but not how
  the help buttons are colored, you might experiment with the other
  possible background colors; a scheme provides six different choices
  (AlternateBackground1 to AlternateBackground6).


  On all systems, a way to cause Priism to use the IVE 3 color scheme
  is to set the environment variable IVE_OLD_LOOK to yes before running
  Priism.