process-trace-color

Arguments: process

Returns either an RGB color object (see make-rgb) or nil, indicating the background color to use in the Trace Dialog outline for traced calls that occur in process, which must be a process (see process-name-to-process). The initial value is nil, indicating that the default window background color (normally white) will be used.

The setf of this function may be called to set or change the trace color of any process. This may be helpful for finding relevant trace output when traced functions are being called in multiple processes. (The Trace Dialog already uses its title-bar to indicate the process of the currently selected item, but adding color to all of the items gives a more immediate overview.) As usual, the Trace Dialog must be present when traced functions are called in order for it to collect the trace output.

Of the standard IDE processes, only the IDE GUI thread has an initial trace color, which is the very pale blue returned by (make-rgb :red 240 :green 240 :blue 255). Calls in this thread typically do not involve application code, and so are likely to be of little interest to application developers. Trace colors generally should be pale to contrast with the black text. For example, the following form would cause all subsequent traced calls in the current process to appear in the Trace Dialog with a pale red background:

(setf (process-trace-color sys:*current-process*)
      (make-rgb :red 255 :green 224 :blue 224))

See also with-trace-color.

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Created 2012.5.30.