I agree it would be welcome to have fully customizable colorization, or at least for now, identify those areas where people have problems (e.g., lettering for volume and such in track view) and fix those. I am particularly aware of visual issues because of all the problems that happened with Harmony Central's designs when the "professionals" took over, and of course, they knew what was "best." I pointed out that a musician's senses tend to favor ears over eyes; they thought light blue type on a snowblind white background was a wonderful idea...be thankful Cakewalk has a better handle on the situation than that...
 
So then the question becomes priorities. I do know that early on in the X-series, when the color options were very limited, I asked about color customization and was told it was more difficult to do for some reason than with 8.5. Regardless, Cakewalk has increased the number of color customization options (not just the console, but the other ones under preferences) since X1. So it is possible, and has been done to some extent.
 
I'm not sure everyone here fully understands how much Cakewalk accomplishes given the available resources. Fortunately, there has been approval of additional hires for 2014, and IIRC one of those is specifically for a full time UI designer.
 
But I should also add that it is because of YOUR support that these additional resources have become possible, and Cakewalk is acutely aware of, and very grateful for, the role you all have played in the turnaround the company is enjoying. For those reasons, there is a very strong desire to satisfy the needs of as many users as possible, as rapidly as possible. If something doesn't get taken care of right away, it's not because you're being ignored, but because what's seen as a greater number of people aren't being ignored.
 
For now, perhaps the best approach is not to expect a complete overhaul of color customization, but to identify the "top 10 visual issues in X3" (like the lack of contrast with the track view volume, pan, and gain labels), in the hopes that those individual elements can be fixed for X3e without hours of coding.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you Graig for a great post. 

Yes, I'd love to see a "top 10 visual issues" thread. That would be more productive.

What I fail to understand is why some people just don't get it. I CANT F***ING SEE THAT WELL!!!!!

 
The failure here is the *presumption* that others know about your eyesight condition. I certainly didn't. Kind of puts a different spin on things. It's less of a choice and more of a need in your case. 
 
But *how* you communicate is important - you must consider your audience. The thread wasn't posited as a *need* but rather a choice, if not a demand. No wonder it's 'just don't get it'
 

I agree Craig except for one thing. If it was so hard to fix color customization in X1/X2, why was Panu able to make them? I could be wrong, I know nothing of coding, but Panu seemed to produce his mods fairly quickly. So, I don't buy that part but I can appreciate what it takes to create a program as elaborate as Sonar. It just seems to me that we got Sonar X3 the fifty shade of gray edition. I haven't look at the manual yet. Is there a section on bondage? ;-)
 
As far as I'm concerned, all these shades of gray are not helpful. It might not be so bad if the console and track view's colors were not linked together. I would like to make the waveforms yellow but with the new Xtra clicks, I have to continually change the colors when I switch between the TV and CV. It would seem that my new workflow will have to remain in X2, since it is usable thanks to Panu's mods, and then fine tune the mix in X3.
 
You would think that since Panu's mods were so popular that the bakers would have got the hint.

SuperG

What I fail to understand is why some people just don't get it. I CANT F***ING SEE THAT WELL!!!!!

 
The failure here is the *presumption* that others know about your eyesight condition. I certainly didn't. Kind of puts a different spin on things. It's less of a choice and more of a need in your case. 
 
But *how* you communicate is important - you must consider your audience. The thread wasn't posited as a *need* but rather a choice, if not a demand. No wonder it's 'just don't get it'
 

You may not have read post 29. 

SuperG

What I fail to understand is why some people just don't get it. I CANT F***ING SEE THAT WELL!!!!!

 
The failure here is the *presumption* that others know about your eyesight condition. I certainly didn't. Kind of puts a different spin on things. It's less of a choice and more of a need in your case. 
 
But *how* you communicate is important - you must consider your audience. The thread wasn't posited as a *need* but rather a choice, if not a demand. No wonder it's 'just don't get it'
 

I have mentioned it before in threads. Especially during the threads when this same complaint was made when the X series first came out. You could be right though. I may not have made it that clear in the beginning of this thread. If your interested, I have RP (retinitis pigmentosa) Itis is an inflammation and retin is the retina. So I have an inflammation of the retina. Tosa is "a condition of" and pigmen refers to the pigment. So it is a inflammation of the retina due to a condition of the pigment. On the inside of the back of the eye, sort of like a CRT monitor, there are cones and rods that receive the light and interpret color and translate it to your brain. Only the center of my retina is still intact. All the rest is deteriorated so as I read the word "deteriorated", I can only see that word on the screen.
 
Which is why Panu's Black Label mod was a life saver for me. It's hard for me to see the text in the CV no matter what shade of gray is selected. So far, the white text with the black shade of gray seems to be the best but it's still not easy. I don't mean to be so adversarial about this but I don't want to waste time trying to see what I'm looking at. It's bad enough I have to keep moving the pointer to one corner to find where the heck I left it. ;-)

Guitarpima
I agree Craig except for one thing. If it was so hard to fix color customization in X1/X2, why was Panu able to make them? I could be wrong, I know nothing of coding, but Panu seemed to produce his mods fairly quickly.

I didn't say it was "so hard to fix," I said "it was more difficult to do for some reason than with 8.5." I try to choose my words carefully, and would prefer not to be misquoted or have someone base a disagreement on something I didn't say.
 
Being able to produce mods, and QCing them to the level that Cakewalk likely feels is necessary, are two different things. If you go to Panu's forum you'll see that some people have issues. Check out the changelog for changes that need to/have been made. I don't know how many users have installed Duckbar, but I presume it's a fraction of total Cakewalk owners. You can already see by the Cakewalk forums how something as simple as a weird graphics card driver can cause untold headaches for Sonar and other programs.
 
I think it's great that Panu has taken it upon himself to do Duckbar, but it's also obvious he has put some real effort into creating and supporting it. Whether Cakewalk has the resources at the moment to match that level of commitment for colorization is an open question.
 

You would think that since Panu's mods were so popular that the bakers would have got the hint.

 
They already got the hint. Cakewalk is aware that people would like more color customization, which is why there were additional color customizations added to X2 and console colorization in X3.
 
The bottom line is that if a complete color customization overhaul was easy, it would have been done by now.
 
[P.S. As to the tone of the thread, there probably would have been a far more positive response if it had been titled "How to Make Sonar Better for the Visually Impaired."]
 
 

Craig is right. The X series GUI format was made without major color customizing in mind. So to make it happen will be an undertaking, which is one  reason X3 took so long to arrive. X3 is a good start, though I've noticed that some colors choices I liked have been removed, such as the CV Name Background. I suppose it was necessary due to the new way of FOCUSing a track.
 
Subsequent versions like X3 are also making it harder for people like Panu to make mods for them. Eventually modding may not be an option.
 
Steve

I hope what I wrote is now making sense... In addition check out the overview here, for those who wonder how priorities get implemented:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org...e_software_development