FootSmart

Introduction

Palettes are used to define a systematic approach to color. For example, I use:

• Black and white for general things, such as enabling or disabling a pedal.
• Green for experimenting with sounds, or settings that I use to inspire creativity.
• Red for songs.
• Blue for banks or presets that navigate (to other banks)

Within each theme, I use the bright color as background for banks and presets that actually do something and dark mode with the bright color as text for banks or presets that navigate. A purely navigational bank, such as the first bank, that navigates to other banks of various types would use the blue theme. A purely navigational bank that only navigates to banks of a single type would use the dark mode of that type's color.

With the MC6Pro without FootSmart, each bank and preset has a color defined. To implement a systematic approach like the one described above is painful and error-prone. You have to set each bank's and each preset's color. And if you decide to switch colors, you have to revisit everywhere it is used.

With FootSmart, a color palette is a name and set of colors making up a theme (all options available with the MC6Pro are in the palette). Instead of banks and presets referring directly to color names, they refer to palettes. In addition, there are a couple of mechanisms of inheritance to further simplify colors.

Syntax

Color names are available here. This is based on reverse engineering, and some don't work well. green produces blurry text, but lime is a lovely green color. Feel free to try colors named like color93 to see what they produce.

The Palettes section is the key palettes and a list of palettes. Each palette is a set of keys and values:

• name: the name of the palette used in banks/presets. Required.
• text: color for text, optional.
• background: color for background, optional.
• bank_text: bank text color, optional.
• bank_background: bank background color, optional.
• preset_text: preset text color, optional.
• preset_background: preset background color, optional.
• preset_shifted_text: preset text color in shifted state, optional.
• preset_shifted_background: preset background color in shifted state, optional.
• preset_toggle_text: preset toggle state text color, optional.
• preset_toggle_background: preset background toggle state color, optional.
• preset_led: preset led color (see semantics), optional.
• preset_led_shifted: preset led shifted color, optional.
• preset_led_toggle: preset led toggle color, optional.

Semantics

Determining a color is a two step process:

• Determining the palette
• Determining the color within the paletted

Determining the palette:

• If the bank or preset specifies the palette (with the palette key), then that palette is used.
• If it is a preset and the bank it is within has a palette, then that palette is used.
• If there is a palette named default then that is used.
• Otherwise, the color field is left blank, defaulting to MC6Pro defaults

Once a palette is selected, the color is determined. The process is described for the bank name, but is similar for most other fields

• If the bank_text color is in the palette, that color is used.
• Otherwise if the text color is in the palette, that is used.
• Otherwise the color field is left blank.

The preset_led fields color a bar below or above the preset name in the display. They do not inherit from the text or background colors as others do. I have not used them, please contact me if you use them and they work, or don't work.

Examples

Example 1:

            palettes:
              - name: Palette 1
                bank_text: white
                bank_background: black
                preset_text: lime
                preset_background: yellow
              - name: Palette 2
                text: purple
                background: orchid
            ...
            banks:
              - name: Joe
                palette: Palette 1
                presets:
                  - short_name: David
                  - short_name: Rick
                    palette: Palette 2
              - name: Nick
                presets:
                  - short_name: Julia

In this simplified example:

• The first bank will have the name Joe displayed in white on a black background (from Palette 1)
• The David preset will be displayed in lime on a yellow background (also from Palette 1)
• The second preset will display Rick in purple on a orchid background, from Palette 2. This also demonstrates using text and background when the more specific preset_text and preset_background are empty.
• The bank Nick and the preset Julia will have the default MC6Pro colors (this is white for text and black for background for the preset, and the default color for the bank.)

Example 2:

            palettes:
              - name: Palette 1
                text: white
                background: black
              - name: default
                text: purple
                background: orchid
            ...
            banks:
              - name: Joe
                presets:
                  - short_name: David
                  - short_name: Rick
                    palette: Palette 1

In this next example:

• The bank will have the name Joe displayed in purple on a black background (from the default palette)
• The David preset will be displayed in purple on a orchid background (also from the default palette)
• The second preset will display Rick in white on a black background, from Palette 1.
• When a default palette exists, the default MC6Pro colors will never be used.

Example 3: My configuration file is more complex, and shows the strategy outlined at the top of this page.