colored dialog items

[Michael Travers <mt@media.mit.edu>]

I'd like to make dialog items on a colored (well, gray) background.
Unforunately the way part-colors are handled on different types of
dialog items are remarkably inconsistent.  Try this:

(setq w (make-instance 'dialog :color-p t))
(set-back-color w *gray-color)
(dolist (c '(check-box-dialog-item static-text-dialog-item
             editable-text-dialog-item sequence-dialog-item
	     radio-button-dialog-item)
   (make-instance c :dialog-item-text "Random" :view-container w
		  :part-color-list '(:body ,*green-color* :frame ,*blue-color*
				     :text ,*red-color*))))

Some of the items end up with a gray background, some end up with a
green background, and (this is the problem) some end up with a white
background.  It doesn't seem possible to get a check-box, for
instance, that has any other background color besides white.

Now, Inside Mac V5 has a nice color plate of a dialog that does this
right, so it's possible in theory.  It seems to require creating
various resources and using special dialog-creation traps that don't
fit into MCL's theory of windows.  I wonder if anybody has taken the
trouble to make this work right, or has some other solution to the
problem.