Rio theming in 9front

Steps

Here is presented an approach of theming rio without having to change its code every time a change of color is needed. Each nested rio may have a different color theme.

A patch should be applied, rio rebuilt, installed, and restarted.

bind -ac /dist/plan9front /
cd /sys/src/cmd/rio
hget https://ftrv.se/_/9/patches/rio-themes.patch | hg patch -f --no-commit -
mk install

The patch makes rio export `/dev/theme` file:

/dev/theme

With simple writes to `/dev/theme` one can change colors dynamically without having to recompile and restart rio. Themes can be stored to files and loaded again after rio has started:

`/usr/glenda/bin/rc/riostart`

window 'cat /usr/glenda/lib/theme/rio.theme > /mnt/wsys/theme;
	sleep 1;
	grep softscreen /dev/vgactl >> /dev/vgactl'

`/usr/glenda/lib/theme/rio.theme`

rioback	/usr/glenda/lib/1920x1080.img
back	f1f1f1
high	cccccc
border	999999
text	000000
htext	000000
title	000000
ltitle	bcbcbc
hold	000099
lhold	005dbb
palehold	4993dd
paletext	6f6f6f
size	000000
menubar	448844
menuback	eaffea
menuhigh	448844
menubord	88cc88
menutext	000000
menuhtext	eaffea

As you can see, `rioback` in this example is set to a Plan 9 image, that's the wallpaper. Images have to be of the same size as your screen and can be converted from a, for example, JPEG file as:

jpg -9t <coolwallpaper1920x1080.jpg >/usr/glenda/lib/1920x1080.img

Picker

rio theming

A more user-friendly interface is provided by installing picker[1] and then running `picker </dev/theme >/dev/theme`.

[1] picker

Picker provides ways to snarf the entire theme, to revert a color or an entire palette, etc. With proper setup (see `man picker`) one can plumb a theme file to change it instantly (while picker is running).

Caveats