Feature Request: Recommended Cable Colors

[ColinP]

Hi Steve,

I apologise for using the term "color fetishists" it was intended as a light-hearted comment to illustrate the passion some people have about exactly which color they use for cables. It wasn't meant to be disrespectful.

My maintained position is that end-users should always have the final say over what color cables they use. I have no desire to force people to use green or any other particular color for cables carrying 1 V/octave pitch signals.

This is about giving people the choice to adopt standards not forcing them to.

As an aside I am using the word color in an attempt to reach out to a standard understanding. In my country the word is actually colour and my computer underlines color in red to indicate that every time I try to speak in a more commonly used language I am making a spelling mistake.

[ColinP]

Also just to make things totally clear all I am suggesting is that an extra button labelled RECOMMENDED is added to the cable color dialog pop-up so that people can opt in to using a standardised color scheme should they wish to do so. I'm not suggesting that people would have to opt out of anything.

[Steve W]

Thanks for the clarifications. As for your use of color v. colour, I almost varied spellings in my replies earlier to be inclusive (color/colour & specialized/specialised). In fact I did use some of the variations but changed them back to be internally consistent. I am bilingual: I can read two versions of English.

[ColinP]

Thanks for that Steve. Peace and understanding is good!

My girlfriend is American and often uses English English and I am English and often use American English.

[creart]

I was actually looking into this myself too today, see if there would be a way to change color/colour (just scrape off the one you don't like) for the cable connected to a jack for a specific signal...
Indeed that would really tidy up the look and feel of patches!
I certainly hope CA will take this request seriously and help us 'developers' out here....

Oh and I am Dutch by the way so normally use KLEUR instead of color/colour...
Maybe I can suggest for you to use that instead in the future??? We only have ONE word for it

cheers Hans

[Steve W]

Oh and I am Dutch by the way so normally use KLEUR instead of color/colour...

That adds a third Dutch word to my vocabulary: first hoi, then welterusten, and now kleur.

[ColinP]

I'm embarrassed to say that my vocabulary doesn't extend much beyond alstublieft and dankjewel even though I have visited the Netherlands many times. I'm always impressed by how so many locals can switch from fluent English, to French, Spanish and back to Dutch without showing the slightest hint of feeling superior!

[huggermugger]

The Nord Modular uses a simple scheme that's quite effective.

Yellow = Logic
Blue = Control
Red = Audio

Modules are automatically programmed to colour jacks according to function (red for audio, blue for CV, yellow for logic), and the cable colours automatically match the signal type. You can of course change the cable colours if you like, including using 3 other colours.

[ColinP]

This is at the top of my wish list.

Using a fixed or random color doesn't work for me and having to pick a color before patching each cable just interrupts the flow. So I usually end up doing the patching all in one color and then switching to housekeeping mode to go through all the cables changing their colors. It's a total pain and wastes a lot of time that could to be spent being creative.

I understand that there's a lot of pressure on CA's developers but I'd be happy with the absolute minimum implementation. So forget about any fancy changes to Designer, please just add a SetRecommendedCableColor( Color color ) method to the socket classes and a RECOMMENDED button to the cable color popup. Such a minor mod wouldn't take any significant coding effort.

[Steve W]

Yeah--this would be nice if we could set up our own list of preferred colors for about two to three dozen most common functions. Would be awful is someone decided the colors for all users.