Theme · Docs · Polestar

lua

Polestar.Theme.Accent() -> r, g, b
Polestar.Theme.Color(name) -> r, g, b, a
   -- grounds "bg","panel","panelAlt","sidebar","footer","sky"; text "text","textDim","textMuted";
   -- "accent","ink" (hairlines/washes),"star","shade" (wells, text shadows, art fades),
   -- "scrim" (dark grounds on zone art),"onAccent" (text on accent fills),"shadow";
   -- "success","warning","danger","quest","npc","item","place","object","level","skill",...,
   -- "dungeon" (dungeon and raid entrances); "mapUnexplored" (tint multiplied onto unexplored
   -- world map overlays: game art, the same in every scheme, outside the legibility guard);
   -- "discord" (Discord's Blurple, on its own mark only, outside the legibility guard)
Polestar.Theme.Wash(role) -> r, g, b, a     -- ink at the role's alpha: "border","divider","hover",
   -- "selected","progress","track","toggle","box","thumb","swatch","chip","watermark","mover"
Polestar.Theme.Hex(name) -> "ffrrggbb"     -- for |c escapes
Polestar.Theme.Palette() -> { name = { r, g, b, a }, ..., scheme = key }  -- resolved, read-only
Polestar.Theme.SchemeKey() -> "dusk" | "night" | "graphite" | "ellesmere"
Polestar.Theme.Band(parent, layer, sub) -> sky texture  -- the night-sky band (sky mask + stars)
Polestar.Theme.GroundAlpha() -> a          -- ui.bgOpacity, every Polestar window's ground
Polestar.Theme.Font(fontString, role)     -- role: "hero","display","title","heading","body","label","note","small","number","caption","goal","name","mono"
Polestar.Theme.FontSpec(role) -> path, size, flags
Polestar.Theme.Skin(frame, kind)          -- "window","panel","inset","button","editbox","checkbox","dropdown","scrollbar","tab","close"
Polestar.Theme.Media(name) -> texturePath -- e.g. "icon-accept", "check", "white", "glow"
Polestar.Theme.OnChanged(fn)              -- fn() on any scheme/colour/font change
Polestar.Theme.IsEllesmere() -> bool
Polestar.Theme.SkinKey() -> "polestar" | "halo" | "blizzard"   -- ui.skin
Polestar.Theme.SkinChoices() -> { { value, text }, ... }
Polestar.Theme.Metric(key, house) -> n   -- a size in the skin in use; `house` in the house style
Polestar.Theme.Icon(name) -> name        -- a glyph a skin draws its own way ("bug" -> "flag")
Polestar.Theme.FontKey() -> "game" | "inter" | "fira"   -- ui.font, "skin" resolved

Skins (ui.skin, Appearance > Windows > Frame): polestar, the house style everything below describes (the default); the two directions of the design handoff, halo (Forever · Halo: no frame, a dark veil with soft edges, an off-white ladder, the game's gold, Fira Sans) and hearth (Forever · Hearth: warm game colours, a brown gradient window, the client's buttons, font and text colours); and the game's own looks, forever, blizzard and classic (below). Theme.GameSkin() is true for Hearth and the game's looks: the client's check boxes, sliders and red buttons, its font and hard shadow. A skin brings:

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its palette (Theme.SKIN_PALETTES: the handoff's tokens as given, washes included); the scheme, ground colour, brightness, band and shadow are the house style's (their options are greyed out in a skin); the player's own accent, window border and arrow colours win in every skin. Tokens the skins added (textOff, title, link, todo, later, manual, skipped, arrive, veil, veilWindow, menuBg, inputBg, control, accentLine, padSelect, chipAccent, separator, rowLine, icon, iconHover, buttonText, personName, tabRest) exist in the house style too, as their house equivalents;
its paints (Theme.SKIN_PAINT, falling back to the house paint): Halo's veil (Media/UI/veil-soft, nine slices laid 24 units out); Hearth's flat brown gradient windows edged by the window border setting (a #5C4518 hairline by default; no game frame) and the game's UI-Panel-Button-*. A frame painted in another skin is cleared first, so a switch and back leaves it as it was;
its fonts (ui.font "skin", the default: the game's in the house style and Hearth and the game's looks, Fira Sans in Halo), its type sizes and text shadow;
its sizes (Theme.Metric): setting rows, buttons, menus, dropdowns, sliders, the guide window (readMetrics / GF.ApplySkin), the shell (W.SHELL reads them) and the guide menu. The big windows take them as they are built.

The arrow follows the skin (nav.arrowStyle "skin", the default: 3D in the house style, the halo dart in Halo, the hearth dart in Hearth and the game's looks; Nav/Arrow.lua). The skins' textures are drawn by tools/media/skins.js.

The game's looks (Theme/GameSkins.lua) draw Polestar in the client's art, the three looks EllesmereUI offers on the Forever client (its visual spec only; nothing of that addon is used), composed as the client's own FrameXML composes its windows: SharedUIPanelTemplates (ButtonFrameTemplateNoPortrait, InsetFrameTemplate, UIPanelButtonTemplate, UIPanelCloseButton), the NineSliceLayouts with the Forever client's offset overrides, and the Settings panel's controls (MinimalTab, the minimal check box, MinimalSliderWithSteppers, WowStyle2Dropdown, MinimalScrollBar, the MenuStyle1 menu ground). Each look is a kit of parts by role (Theme.KITS), drawn by Theme.Kit* helpers the widgets and the guide window call, and kept in frame.psSkin.kit so a skin change hides them:

the big windows (shells, dialogs) are the template's Bg: its metal frame lies outside them, with the title bar above (a drag strip and the title on it) and the close button on its corner; rock under the content, the sidebar an inset, gold setting labels and list rows (rowLabel, navRest);
the guide window and the toasts (psLight) keep EllesmereUI's small-window looks: Forever's bronze micro menu line, Blizzard's black body under a fade with the damage meter's header bar, Classic's tooltip tile under the chat tab's rim;
atlases the client draws sliced (UiTextureAtlasElementSliceData) are cut at the same margins (ns.GameArtSlice).

Sources: forever names atlas elements (the Forever client draws its own -c60 art for them); blizzard draws the same elements in their retail art, which still ships with the client but which SetAtlas does not draw there, by file ID and coordinates from Theme/GameArt.lua (generated with the slice margins by node tools/polestar.js media game-art, tools/media/game-art.js); classic names the vanilla files (the dialog box and tooltips through BackdropTemplate).

No client art is copied into the addon; the kits name files and atlases. With POLESTAR_CLIENT_ART holding the client's UI textures decoded to <fileid>.tga plus atlases.json and files.json, node tools/polestar.js preview draws them (SetAtlas, GetAtlasInfo and file paths resolve) and renders the local-only skins-game-* scenes into that folder.

Colour schemes (ui.scheme, Theme.SCHEMES): Dusk (default: Night's navy lifted to dusk), Night (the original deep navy-black, values unchanged), Graphite (neutral, lighter), and EllesmereUI (offered only while it is installed; grounds derived from its S.GetPanelColor(), its accent). A scheme is data: the grounds, the text ladder, ink, shade, scrim, onAccent and shadow; the subject and status colours are shared. No light scheme ships: transparent mode and the arrow draw text straight on the game world, where it must be a light ladder with a dark outline, and the starfield band has no daylight form, so a light scheme could not reach every surface.

Resolution (Theme.Palette(), rebuilt on any look setting change), per colour: the user's own value > "Match EllesmereUI" (installed and on) > the scheme.

Accent: ui.accent (false or { r, g, b }) > the class colour when ui.classAccent (default off; C_ClassColor/RAID_CLASS_COLORS, moved toward the text colour until it reads at 4.5:1 on the panel) > EllesmereUI's when ui.matchAccent (default on) or the EllesmereUI scheme > Polestar gold. One source at a time: turning one of ui.accent, ui.classAccent, ui.matchAccent on turns the other two off.
Grounds: ui.bgColor (false or { r, g, b }; every ground derived from it by Dusk's lightness steps in OKLab) > the scheme; then ui.brightness (-1..1, every ground's OKLab lightness by up to ±0.2); then the legibility guard: if any ground would carry primary text under 7:1, secondary or muted text under 4.5:1, or a subject/status colour under 4.5:1 (not on the sky), every ground is darkened together by the least lightness that restores it.
Ground opacity: ui.bgOpacity for every window skin.
Font: EllesmereUI's when ui.matchFont (default off) and installed, else ui.font (skin by default: the skin's | game | inter | fira; CJK clients always the game font). A string holding Hangul, kana or Chinese characters on a client whose locale does not draw that script (a player's name in Chinese on an English client) takes the client's font for it (Theme.ScriptFont: Fonts\2002.TTF, Fonts\ARKai_T.ttf), checked again whenever the text changes.
Settings from before schemes: a stored accent equal to the old gold default is dropped at load (Theme.lua's migrate); any other stays the user's own.
Window frame (the window skin of every top-level window, live): ui.border (default on) and its thickness ui.borderSize (1–4 physical pixels, growing outward; Theme.WindowBorder()), its colour the windowBorder token: ui.borderColor (false or { r, g, b }) > the accent at 80% when ui.borderAccent > the scheme's border hairline (the two sources turn each other off); ui.shadow (default on) for the drop shadow; ui.band (default on, Theme.ShowsBand()) paints every header band clear when off (a band standing in for missing zone art stays).
The arrow: the arrow token is nav.arrowColor > the accent; arrowNear is nav.arrowNearColor > success. Their arrowText / arrowNearText forms carry the arrow's text, lifted toward the text colour until they read at 4.5:1 on the lightest ground (Theme.Legible's rule); the arrow, its ring, the map target pin and the route stops wear the colours unchanged.

EllesmereUI is read only through its documented skinning API (EllesmereUI.RegisterSkin, S.GetAccentColor, S.GetPanelColor, S.GetFont, S.OnLooksChanged); its frame primitives are not applied. Every surface paints from tokens (W.Color, W.Painter, Theme.Skin, Theme.Band), so a scheme or colour change repaints live without a reload.