Reusing and changing skins without changing its previous appearance in a layout

[AnryuKen]

Beside dvo's reply I think that duplicating the config is the only solution. For instance rename the Skins\Fountain of Colors config to Fountain of Colors Red, create a new config and rename it to Fountain of Colors Blue. Make the appropriate settings on both. Now you have to include one of this configs into the first layout and the the other into the second layout. Whenever are you loading any of these layouts, the appropriate config will be loaded.
Try out this solution if you are interested and let me know if it does work. I'm not sure it will, but maybe worth a try.

Ok, so I tried it again managed to successfully do it. I now have 2 separate Fountain of Colors, one RED and one BLUE. In the process though my Rainmeter did crash but I guess that's unavoidable. Hopefully I can do this with other skins.

[balala]

Hopefully I can do this with other skins.

For sure you can. Now you have to include the two variant into the two layouts.

[Yincognito]

If it's only about one color, I guess this can be done by changing that variable with a click and refresh the skin, without using layouts or duplicates at all. Obviously I don't know if this would be easy to do for a skin like Fountain of Colors, so probably for now it's best to stick with balala's proposed solution.

[Yincognito]

The only advantage to a 3rd-party plugin like mine is that you can simply have one measure, and then use it with inline section variables to have that single measure detect any number of skins.

I'm not sure I understand this fully, but if it is what I think it is, it's a big advantage, one I wouldn't give up to. I believe using the plugin or the envisioned measure would mostly target multiple skin checking, instead of a single one, from the user's perspective.

[AnryuKen]

If it's only about one color, I guess this can be done by changing that variable with a click and refresh the skin, without using layouts or duplicates at all. Obviously I don't know if this would be easy to do for a skin like Fountain of Colors, so probably for now it's best to stick with balala's proposed solution.

My worry is that if I keep duplicating several skins just to have a different type, it might affect the performance of rainmeter because I have a lot of skins. Right now I already have a lot of skins, some I don't even use right now but I'm planning to use in the future for suites I might do.

[balala]

My worry is that if I keep duplicating several skins just to have a different type, it might affect the performance of rainmeter because I have a lot of skins. Right now I already have a lot of skins, some I don't even use right now but I'm planning to use in the future for suites I might do.

Doesn't matter how many skins do you have, but matters how many are loaded. This is what is important, not the number of installed, but not-running skins.

[Yincognito]

My worry is that if I keep duplicating several skins just to have a different type, it might affect the performance of rainmeter because I have a lot of skins. Right now I already have a lot of skins, some I don't even use right now but I'm planning to use in the future for suites I might do.

Besides balala's note about loaded skins, while duplicating a skin does indeed consume a (little) bit of space on your HDD, considering that at any moment you'll only have a certain "type" of that skin loaded (e.g. you won't load both the red and the blue "type" at the same time, just the one you desire in that moment), this won't affect Rainmeter's performance at all, at least not compared to having just the original loaded. This is simply because it won't change how many instances of that skin you have loaded, it will always be just one that's loaded.

Of course, if you have a lot of skins stored in your Rainmeter folder this will add a bit to the "mess" there, but apart from that, unless you load multiple skin or skin suites at the same time (I'm not talking about "types" or "variants" of the same skin here), you'll be fine from a performance point of view. Obviously, I'm assuming that the said skin or skins are reasonably optimized in terms of the code. Generally, some of them aren't quite up to the standard, from what I noticed...

[balala]

while duplicating a skin does indeed consume a (little) bit of space on your HDD,

Come on, I doubt this would be a problem on modern computers. For sure it isn't...

[Yincognito]

Come on, I doubt this would be a problem on modern computers. For sure it isn't...

I didn't say it would be problem for the computer - that's why I added "little" to the phrase - but it could be an inconvenient for the user (an exaggerately picky user like me, for instance ). That being said, it is the truth, isn't it? I mean, it will take some space, even though it won't be an issue (I think not even for older computers, assuming a decent skin size).

Regarding skin sizes, I recently saw a 100 MB skin, so... add 10 of those and you'll get 1 GB

[balala]

but it could be an inconvenient for the user (an exaggerately picky user like me, for instance ). That being said, it is the truth, isn't it?

Yep, this is true.

Regarding skin sizes, I recently saw a 100 MB skin, so... add 10 of those and you'll get 1 GB

Yes, but that's any extreme case. Usually most skins aren't so large.