That's what the schemes are for - if a module needs more defined colors, just go and add them for the module. No need to clutter the general theme with it.

Personally I don't intent to loop the colors in the theme over the already defined colors of the theme. With five colors total most likely that's just not needed, editing 2 lines instead of one won't really hurt anyone.

I'm not the worlds best on XML but I'll give it a shot.


Not sure if that's even close to being sane. I'm not an XML kind of dude.

Now the question is: Should there be a separate file for each module or should all of it be squeezed into one file?

In either case it is my opinion that we should limit the amount of colors to a core set. Vhab suggested something like 3 colors. That might be a bit low. The list I made would perhaps be too much too.

After reconsidering I am thinking something like

* Headline - For use on top of windows and perhaps with !c
* Highlight - For use on stuff that is to be highlighted like nicks, levels
* Normal - For normal text output to all channels.
* Error - For error messages apperantly.
* Enabled - For stuff that is turned ON (Might be skipped and use highlight instead)
* Disabled - For stuff that is turned OFF (As above
* Omni, Neutral and clan - For indicating faction (might be used instead of highlight for nicks

IMO that should be enough colors to liven up the output while keeping the theme configuration needs to a minimum.

I'm not saying we shouldn't support adding more colors but the modules shipped with the bot ought to use these standards.

By the way alreadythere. I wish you would hang with us on #bebot@irc.funcom.com IRC channel.

How about one theme per file and the following tags?

• <theme name="somename" version="0.1" author="someauthor" link="somelink" /> optional for some information about theme and author
• <color name="name" code="code" /> for the colors of a theme
• <scheme module="modname" name="schemename" color="colorname" /> for actual scheme information, optional again

That list got all information, is easy to parse if you keep to one tag per line for simplicity, and should cover all needs.

Implemented a first version of color themes. Theme files reside in the theme/ directory under the bot root, and end on the extension .colors.xml.

Right now 5 colors are expected in themes:

• normal
• highlight
• error
• blob_text
• blob_title

Recognized XML tags are:

• <theme name="somename" version="0.1" author="someauthor" link="somelink" /> optional for some information about theme and author
• <color name="name" code="code" /> for the colors of a theme using a color code
• <color name="name" color="colorname" /> for the colors of a theme using an existing color as color

Currently there is no UI to change the theme file yet.

I've left out the scheme support yet. Not sure if I'll add that to theme files, as it creates a few questions on updates. Should a scheme definition in a theme file be written into the table? And if you update it ingame should it be written to the theme file? Best would be to add support for importing and exporting scheme definition files, so you can setup your schemes, write them to a file and share or use in other bots.

So it should be something like the following?

Added UI for themes (!theme command).

Changed default XML structure to valid one - not that I really do any XML parsing, I just do simple pattern matching

Check the colors table, every color name in there is supported as colorname for theme colors. Most likely it's some spelling error, though the Default file should be spelled correctly.

Going to add Default theme file in themes/ asap though, should avoid some confusion.