Stereo Tool

Hi

First, I am a brand new user of Stereo Tool. However, I am only able to use it in it's default state, due to the colour scheme it uses, because I have low vision. I have tried the built in skins, none of which I can use. I'm so new, I may even be posting to the wrong forum, but hey, if I am, please accept my apologies, and redirect me to the right one. If there is a place where I might find the kind of Skin I am looking for, along the lines of Windows 'High Contrast Black', then please tell me where to go to find them.

Okay, assuming the above does not yield a pre-made skin I can use, please let me make a request? I have aboslutely no idea what is involved in making a Skin, so I am unsure of how naive this request might be. If any of you feel I should be able to make my own skin somehow, please let me know how this is done. Failing that, I wonder if there is a kind soul out there, for whom throwing a quick and basic skin together, would be an easy task, who would be prepared to do this for me, if I gave very specific directions on what I need?

Basically, I need nothing but white text on a black background, and where there is pink, change this to a slightly darker shade of mid blue, and where there is a white background, change that to transparent or maybe a mid brown, leaving a white frame to indicate which item has been highlighted. If headings and dropdown boxes need to differentiated, then use a mid green to differentiate from the mid brown. I think that would be it in a nutshell.

Basically, brighter colours, such as pink, and whites, are painful for my eyes to look at, and I am completely unable to read any text on them. White text on a less bright colour, like the mid blue, green, brown, that I mentioned are far easier to look at, and white text contrasts well on those colours.

I may be asking too much, in which case I am sorry. Until I can get past this graphic issue, I am unable to do anything other than use it as it comes out of the box, so to speak. I have been advised that it may be possible to make changes via a text file, but this would be an uncessarily clumsy work around, if I could just solve this colour issue.

Any help forthcoming would be extremely appreciated.

Many thanks

PS. Sorry for the long post!

Hi,

Making a skin is not very difficult, but I think it's virtually impossible if you have low vision. You need to edit dozens of small PNG images.

Basically, you need a skin that's dark with white texts, right? So everything needs to be dark enough to make a white text on top of it readable. And avoid certain colors.

I'm wondering if we can make a skin that will work for you AND be good for other people who don't have great eyesight. And looks good too.

(Moving this to the Skins section)

(Edit: Dang, can't figure out how to move this thing. Sometimes I hate PhpBB. Never mind then...)

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Hi Hans, and thanks for your reply. I've been away and managed to return home with a cold, so apologies for the delay in writing back.

I think credit is due to the way you are thinking, in terms of a solution that fits all. Unfortunately, while there are colour schemes that would certainly suit most low vision users, such as the one I indicated, it is unlikely that you could suit 'all'. Most low vision users benefit from a black background, but a small minority actully need a white background. Those needing a white background are generally already catered for by standard Windows colour schemes on offer. However, if you want to make a standard skin that suits most, then I can help with that, along the lines of what I've already discussed.

In short though, brighter colours, such as all shades of pink, yellow, orange, white, and all pale shades of all other colours, should be avoided. Mid to dark blue, green, brown, grey, red, purple, and black, can be used instead. Where you use a shaded background to indicate where a particular menu item has been highlighted, a white line to frame the highlighted item would be better. I would suggest two versions of the same skin. One with white text on a blackground, and one with yellow text on a blackground, because there are some that find yellow easier to see than white. I however, need white text.

The ultimate answer lies with a fully customisable colour pallette for each element on the app, but that might take a lot more development time and effort than simply creating a skin. You could have a separate colour pallette for headings, sub headings, the background colours to the various parameter levels, the overall background colour, font colours and background colours etc. So as to allow people to individually and dynamically adjust the colours to suit them. You could also provide different thickness of lines providing a frame around headings, meters, and and around a cursor selected item.

Please let me know Hans, if there is anything I can do to help, however trivial the question may seem, I am very happy to do anything to allow this to happen. The sooner it happens, the sooner I can get to know the software's functionality, and to even consider paid features.

Hi, just checking back to see if there's been a reply and I'm wondering if my last post made sense, and if you've had any thoughts?