I took a theme , made it pretty ugly so as to see what goes where.
Added comments to the file and tested it to make sure it works.
Here's what it looks like.
I call this theme multi.template , yeah I know but it's descriptive.
What you can do is make a text file named multi.template
copy this into the file.
<JWM>
<!-- multi.template -->
<WindowStyle>
<Font>DejaVu Sans 14</Font>
<Width>5</Width>
<Height>20</Height>
<Active>
<Text>black</Text>
<Title>red</Title>
<Outline>black</Outline>
</Active>
<Inactive>
<Text>black</Text>
<Title>green</Title>
<Outline>black</Outline>
</Inactive>
</WindowStyle>
<!-- active window red backround and black font , inactive window green with black font -->
<!-- window title bar is 20 pixels high , border is 5 pixels wide , text is black -->
<!-- outline is the last pixel of the outer edge of the window , here it is black -->
<TaskListStyle>
<Font>DejaVu Sans 12</Font>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>purple</ActiveBackground>
<Foreground>black</Foreground>
<Background>yellow</Background>
</TaskListStyle>
<!-- start button is yellow until active , then turns purple -->
<!-- active program pager is purple , inactive is yellow in the bottom tray -->
<!-- popup menu is pink , then turns purple when active -->
<TrayStyle>
<Font>DejaVu Sans 12</Font>
<Background>tan</Background>
<Foreground>black</Foreground>
</TrayStyle>
<!-- bottom bar is tan with black fonts , as the clock shows -->
<ClockStyle>
<Font>Terminus Bold-16</Font>
<Foreground>black</Foreground>
</ClockStyle>
<!-- this is my clock style , it can be deleted if you like -->
<PagerStyle>
<Outline>black</Outline>
<Foreground>wheat</Foreground>
<Background>#ca9655</Background>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>wheat</ActiveBackground>
</PagerStyle>
<!-- this is the pager which shows open programs on the bottom tray , active is purple , inactive is yellow -->
<MenuStyle>
<Font>DejaVu Sans 12</Font>
<Foreground>black</Foreground>
<Background>pink</Background>
<ActiveForeground>black</ActiveForeground>
<ActiveBackground>orange</ActiveBackground>
</MenuStyle>
<!-- press start button yellow turns purple , apps are pink till selected and then turn orange (active) -->
<PopupStyle enabled="true">
<Font>DejaVu Sans 11</Font>
<Outline>black</Outline>
<Foreground>black</Foreground>
<Background>white</Background>
</PopupStyle>
<!-- popup description is white backround with black font -->
<!-- this is the popup description of each icon in the tray , hover the mouse to see -->
</JWM>
Take the file and copy it to ~/.jwm/themes
Select themes and update list.
Select any other theme.
Restart JWM
Select multi.template theme.
Restart JWM
Now you can see where the colors are located and I added descriptions of them to the file.
Make a copy of the template , change the name , copy it to ~/.jwm/themes and go nuts with colors.
Hey the colors are all free and it's fun to play with.
To make it simple to start , go to / etc / X11 / rgb.txt you can use all the colors in there to start.
It gets a bit weird when you start using the HEX colors instead of the named colors , but you get my drift.
My first try with commenting XML but it was fun.
Colin