Observes track names and automatically assigns colors to tracks by predefined filter rules.
It’s comparable to Reapers SWS auto color extension. How it works is best explained by example:
E.g. filter is: kick, snare, hihat, drums -> color red
E.g. filter is: synth[0-9], lead -> color green
Now, if any track name contains the string “snare”. E.g. snare1, softsnare,hardsnare,… it’s color will automatically be changed to red. Beside this very simple filter, it’s also possible to define multiple filters using more complex filter strings that may include wildcards / regular expressions. For more details have a look at the PDF manual.
It’s late at night, maybe not the best time to test some regexps - but do I have to use quotes when using blanks?
I tried:
add:^dr .*$
expecting to have all tracks with a "dr " prefix to change to the same colour, but then all tracks changed.
The track where I applied the rule is now named “.*$”, so this seems to be the regexp which was used…
Hey thanks for the positive feedback, always appreciated :-).
The problem is the whitespace which functions beside , as delimiter, so your command is interpreted as: color = ^dr or .$
.$ stands for everything, so all tracks have the same color.
Guess I should remove space as second delimiter. I added it because it’s so easy to enter something like: add:hat cymbal snare insteas of: add:hat,cymbal,snare. But obviously it causes other problems and it’s therefore not so clever. Guess I’ll remove it in the next release.
Yeah, I can see the convenience. I simply assumed I can use any old regular expression, being unaware of the possibility to add more than one at the same time, so I happily used the blank. One of the rare cases I didn’t RTFM.
Thanks for the workaround suggestion. Actually, I don’t name my tracks in such a consistent fashion, but probably will start doing so with your tool.
well, yes I’m the impatient guy so I seldom read the fine manuals ^^ - mostly it would help, though.
Maybe I’ll move the delimiter list into config.xml for next release. So everybody can decide by oneself.
Another hint for using the tool - maybe you’ve found out already: there’s a dialog window which shows the currently installed filters.
(You suggested an update function and also using sections as terminal symbols, right? Didn’t have much time lately, but I hope I will be back on the track soon.)
Edit: Just noticed it’s already linked, thanks web admin!
No problems here. Good it’s being maintained properly.
Hey, I havent gone into the entrails of this tool, so can’t really tell if this would be possible, but… Feature request: if a track color changes, check name against filters, update tracks in the filter the track belongs automatically? The upd: works all right with normal stuff, but when dealing with regular expressions, one must retype the regexp every time the filter color needs updating… Would be a sweet addition, but maybe could make stuff complicated.
that’s really an interesting idea. I’ll think about it, maybe I could include such behaviour as an optional feature.
When fixing the bug(s) I’ll have a look at it.
I like this tool. I like to color code my tracks according to what kind character the content have.
But there is one thing which kind of annoys me and that is that when loading up a song the regexp is executed even though there may not be any changes made to the colors since it last was saved. This causes the “Save changes?”-dialog to appear when closing or loading up a new song. Meaning that this dialog will show up everytime you close or load a song.
Unfortunately I don’t have any Lua skills to make neccessary changes myself.
Development hasn’t really stopped, means right now I’m not working on new features, but bugs are fixed and compatibility for newer Renoise versions shall be maintained.
You are the first one reporting this behaviour and I’ll have a look at it. May I ask which Renoise version do you use ?
Maybe a check if current colors/regexp in loaded song are identical to the ones saved, and if so not actually executing the regexp and applying the colors.
this tool is so awesome!! I first installed it a long time ago but hadn’t read the documentation and had no idea how to use it… and it crashed a couple times on me.
Well, I took a look at it again today, and it took me a few minutes to work it out but I’m glad I did. If you don’t use this tool, definitely check it out. It’s sweet!!
Appeared in a song with only one send track, after I deleted that send track:
'/Users/Ju/Library/Preferences/Renoise/V3.1.0/Scripts/Tools/de.airmann.AutoColors.xrnx/main.lua' failed in one of its notifiers.The notifier will be disabled to prevent further errors.
Please contact the author (Matthias Ehrmann [airmann_pub@online.de]) for assistance...
./AutoColors.lua:163: attempt to index local 'track' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
./AutoColors.lua:163: in function 'remove_track_name_changed_notifier'
./AutoColors.lua:206: in function <./AutoColors.lua:195>
