Hey cubic! Thanks for the detailed response, makes a lot more sense now.
I'll just continue refining my default v5 theme, then. As you say, it sounds like an incredible amount of work for something that the majority of people won't likely use. Doesn't seem likely the new v6 theme will have this option either (I made a couple posts about this in the v6 theme thread that have gone unnoticed, which is all good. White Tie has a lot to deal with and handle with that!) Hopefully I'll be able to tweak that in a similar fashion.
I'm working with this in the v5 theme:
tcp_heights 0 18 18 30 ; supercollapsed, collapsed, small(norecarm), recarm size
with a layout like this:
Layout "bb --- Small + value readouts" "small"
; ---------------------------- USER : mess with these:----------------------------
; order of controls (1-15)
def order_recarm 5
def order_label 1
def order_volume 2
def order_io 0
def order_pan_width 0
def order_mute 3
def order_solo 4
def order_fx 6
def order_fxbyp 0
def order_phase 7
def order_env 8
def order_recmode 9
def order_recmon 10
def order_fxin 11
def order_recinput 12
set pad [3 3]
set n_border [6 6]
set e_size [0 0 15 15]
; element w h pad glu sf
variance order_recarm 0 0 0 0 0
variance order_label 170 0 0 0 0
variance order_volume -75 0 -3 0 0.15
variance order_io 5 0 0 0 0
variance order_pan_width 18 0 0 0 0
variance order_mute 0 0 50 0 0
variance order_solo 0 0 -4 1 0
variance order_fx 20 0 0 0 0
variance order_fxbyp 0 0 0 0 0
variance order_phase 0 0 0 0 0
variance order_env 22 0 0 0 0
variance order_recmode 2 0 0 0 0
variance order_recmon 0 0 0 1 0
variance order_fxin -1 0 0 0 0
variance order_recinput 70 0 -4 1 0.05
set min_width [172]
set f_align [2]
set show_vals [0]
set use_area [1]
set popup_fader [0]
; ----------------------------- OK, stop messing here ----------------------------
And it works OK, really can't complain too much