Color Filter back for entire row?

[kunkel321]

With Color Filters, I noticed that if there is no Back Color set, then the Text Color gets propagated all the way across the entire row. (I mean, in Details View, the Size, Date, etc. columns are colored; not just the Name column.)

Is there a reason that you don't have the colors do that when there's a back color assigned? Maybe because of the "Draw in Distinctive Shapes" option (?) I think I'd prefer to just have the whole row colored.

What would be even more cooler is if I could tell XY which patterns should affect the entire row. (presumably with an inline tag in the rule pattern)

[admin]

Backcolor for entire row is already used for other purposes in XY (Highlight selected/focused rows/optionally Labels).

[kunkel321]

Also I see that the current method allows me to potentially have two separate color codes.

It looks like the colors can't be "on top of" each other (e.g. green back + red fore of name), so they can be side by side instead...

BTW, am trying to learn these switches... Brain.... Hurts....

[admin]

Yes, this part is a bit tricky. It should not become more tricky.

[TheQwerty]

It looks like the colors can't be "on top of" each other (e.g. green back + red fore of name), so they can be side by side instead...

This is actually the point of the merge switch.

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+*.dat //m|>,80FF80
+ks>FF0000,
+tag>0000FF,

The //m| tells XY to combine this back color with the next matching pattern with only a text color defined.

screenshot.51.png (15.37 KiB) Viewed 3049 times

[kunkel321]

Cool!
In the Instant Color filters section of the Help docs, it says

They are always processed on top of all other color filters, so you always see all matches. Whereas in normal color filters it's common that the first match covers any possible other matches because usually only one color can be shown at the time for each item (exception: Details view allows two colors simultaneously per item under certain conditions).

Does that mean we can embed the Merge switch in the ICF and it will merge with regular CF rules?

[TheQwerty]

Does that mean we can embed the Merge switch in the ICF and it will merge with regular CF rules?

In some quick experimenting that seems to work, so this appears to be the case.

[kunkel321]

Does that mean we can embed the Merge switch in the ICF and it will merge with regular CF rules?

In some quick experimenting that seems to work, so this appears to be the case.

Hi Qwerty,
Would you be willing to share your setup for merging these?
My own setup is this plain old based on extensions for my regular CFs.


The doc, xls, and image ones do not have back colors assigned.
And then for my 'Instant' CFs, I have this single rule.

"New red to old blue" ageC:<10 n;ageM:<10 n m|>,FF9D9D||ageC:<120 n;ageM:<120 nm|>,FFCB97||ageC:<1 d;ageM:<1 dm|>,FFFFBB||ageC:<30 d;ageM:<30 dm|>,B1FEDA||ageC:>5 d;ageM:>5 dm|>,D2D2FF

They're not merging though... The ICF simply 'overwrites' the regular CFs... Thoughts?

[TheQwerty]

And then for my 'Instant' CFs, I have this single rule.

"New red to old blue" ageC:<10 n;ageM:<10 n m|>,FF9D9D||ageC:<120 n;ageM:<120 nm|>,FFCB97||ageC:<1 d;ageM:<1 dm|>,FFFFBB||ageC:<30 d;ageM:<30 dm|>,B1FEDA||ageC:>5 d;ageM:>5 dm|>,D2D2FF

They're not merging though... The ICF simply 'overwrites' the regular CFs... Thoughts?

Keep in mind that the switch is an extension of the comment field so it needs to be '//m|'.

With that in mind give this a try and then I'll explore some:

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"New red to old blue" ageC:<10 n;ageM:<10 n //m|>,FF9D9D||ageC:<120 n;ageM:<120 n //m|>,FFCB97||ageC:<1 d;ageM:<1 d //m|>,FFFFBB||ageC:<30 d;ageM:<30 d //m|>,B1FEDA||ageC:>5 d;ageM:>5 d //m|>,D2D2FF

EDIT: I think making your switches '//m|' is all you'll need to do. You'll end up with highlighting like this:

screenshot.53.png (21.08 KiB) Viewed 2992 times

Is that what you're after?

EDIT 2: What's interesting about this is it suggests that for many cases it might be more useful to double-up on definitions which define both colors and make use of the merge switch so that at least the text color still gets inherited when using merging ICFs.

In other words your original CFs might be better off like (I didn't spend much time getting your colors correct. ):

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+size:0 //m|>,000000
+size:0>FFFF80,
+*.docx;*.doc;*.docm;*.rtf>4287D2,
+*.png;*.jpg;*.gif;*.bmp>933968,
+*.exe;*.msi;*.bat //m|>,FFFF80
+*.exe;*.msi;*.bat>D24257,
+*.pdf>FF2B2B,
+*.zip;*.rar //m|>,E0E0E0
+*.zip;*.rar>CC6600,
+*.dll;*.ini //m|>,DDDDDD
+*.dll;*.ini>646464,
+*.xlsx;*.xls;*.xlsm;*.csv>00FF00,
+*.mp3;*.wav //m|>,FFD9C6
+*.mp3;*.wav>FF8000,
+Dir:>808040,

The above is in List Management > Color Filters > Editor Mode (Pencil / F6) Format

Then when you apply your ICFs you'll still get the font colors for those items that normally would have both colors changed. Like so:

screenshot.54.png (22.4 KiB) Viewed 2987 times

And without the ICF:

screenshot.55.png (16.03 KiB) Viewed 2986 times

[kunkel321]

Perfect! Thanks so much!
I guess CF comments are rather non traditional...
Doesn't the "//" usually suggest that everything after it for the rest of the line will be invisible? I'm not a programmer, but I've done a little bit of VBA.

[TheQwerty]

Perfect! Thanks so much!
I guess CF comments are rather non traditional...
Doesn't the "//" usually suggest that everything after it for the rest of the line will be invisible? I'm not a programmer, but I've done a little bit of VBA.

Usually it that's the case, and in XY it all depends on where you're looking at the definitions.

In the Configuration | Color Filters list they do appear as end-of-line comments because the colors are not shown as text.
In the List Management lists for CF and ICF they are just before the colors (well the '>' that separates patterns from colors).
It gets really crazy when the ICF itself is a multi-filter definition since everything becomes a single line.

For me at least, I find that the Caption portion is generally enough of a comment on the entry and thus only use the '//' for switches and pre-filters.

[kunkel321]

Very cool!
Yes, separating the fore- and back-colors is definitely the way to go!

I actually do prefer mixing them as my standard setup, I had just recently removed the back colors so I could do merging.
My prefered scheme, is dark blue text with light blue back for files that are related to MS Word, because that matches the default app icon color scheme. Green for Excel and Red for PDFs (Adobe colors).

Thanks again!

Side note: My age-based color spectrum setup for ICFs was too gawdy. I've changed it to a nice grey scale.

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"Gray: Older is darker" ageC:<1 n;ageM:<1 n //m|>,FAFAFA||ageC:<5 n;ageM:<5 n //m|>,F2F2F2||ageC:<30 n;ageM:<30 n //m|>,E6E6E6||ageC:<120 n;ageM:<120 d //m|>,D8D8D8||ageC:<1 d;ageM:<1 d //m|>,BDBDBD||ageC:<5 d;ageM:<5 d //m|>,A4A4A4||ageC:<30 d;ageM:<30 d //m|>,848484||ageC:<90 d;ageM:<90 d //m|>,6E6E6E||ageC:<1 y;ageM:<1 y //m|>,585858||ageC:>1 y;ageM:>1 y //m|>,424242

Don't worry, there's only 11 shades of Gray in this story.

[WordBaron]

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"Gray: Older is darker" ageC:<1 n;ageM:<1 n //m|>,FAFAFA||ageC:<5 n;ageM:<5 n //m|>,F2F2F2||ageC:<30 n;ageM:<30 n //m|>,E6E6E6||ageC:<120 n;ageM:<120 d //m|>,D8D8D8||ageC:<1 d;ageM:<1 d //m|>,BDBDBD||ageC:<5 d;ageM:<5 d //m|>,A4A4A4||ageC:<30 d;ageM:<30 d //m|>,848484||ageC:<90 d;ageM:<90 d //m|>,6E6E6E||ageC:<1 y;ageM:<1 y //m|>,585858||ageC:>1 y;ageM:>1 y //m|>,424242

Don't worry, there's only 11 shades of Gray in this story.

I tried this color filter but noticed that anything just within one year of age had no color coding whatsoever. Do you see the same thing?