Many questions here, including mine, include the search for settings. Often regarding colors and graphical stuff.
What, if we had a special customize mode, that has a lister on the left side, where parts of it can be clicked on (like a menu, or parts of a toolbar, or even a real item that has a label or a status label), and on the right side there would a list being generated, that shows all related settings to the item that was pointed on.
For example, i often struggle with labels or status labels, and where they actually come from. I can find them, but most of the time it will take a time to figure it out. I find especially the vast amount of color settings challenging, where a feature like this would be most helpful. I know, the settings filters almost work like that, if you know, what you're really searching for. But sometimes you find yourself searching for "this thing here". So i figure, that this kind of "point and search" feature would be a great improvement to Opus.
Yes. Sounds like the devs would have to turn Opus inside out to achieve that. Maybe just a part of it could be built in over time. I just had a case, where i wanted to color my GPX files in their own color, and made a grp: entry for it, and had to remember that i need to use the exact name from my File Types settings to get the color working on gpx files. I even once had my own "knowledge base" file, where i had written up tons of specific settings, but somehow i had lost that text file. So it often happens that i have to reconstruct, so to speak, what i did a long time ago, when i did that setting. That's the burden that comes with very complex and configurable applications, i guess.
It's not even about dev effort (we code to paint a lot of those elements already, to provide all the real-time example images next to many color settings).
It's actually really difficult to show all the colors on a single image, since there are so many, including ones for states you never see at the same time as each other. Even if you contrive a situation where they could all be shown next to each other, and could fit that many objects on-screen, they wouldn't look how they look normally (since they'd have unusual things next to them, contrasting with them), making it harder to find and adjust them using the image.
The way we tackled this internally (when working out where colors and theme parts were used to implement dark mode) was to log which elements get used, so we could make something paint and then see what was involved. But even that doesn't work perfectly. There's a lot of noise (requiring filtering and technical knowledge to work out what to focus on and what to ignore), it degrades performance a lot, and it won't catch everything, and a lot of things cache colors and other visual elements the first time they open or paint something, leaving no log entries when the relevant thing is actually painted. We still have that tool, but it's not compiled into public releases (mainly because it harms performance), and it's easier to find a color in Preferences than to use it, in our experience.
Yes, i see the problem here. Having all elements tracked would just shift the issue to another place, where the users still ends up with a plethora of confusing informations.
I guess i should do more experimenting with exporting of the settings. E.g., when i want to transfer my color settings to my brothers computer, having made screenshots, i still wind up missing some the details. When i apply my whole settings to the other machine, i would run into path and drive names issues.
My main concerns here wre about transferring the color settings (maybe saving a Theme would help, i will try that the next time) and finding the source of old and forgotten status labels in the settings jungle. For the latter, maybe an option like for the "i" (or the older lock symbol) to spot the setting which triggers the label would be possible? Like shift-hovering over an item (colored file or folder) or status label.
