Right-click on a node in the node library > Tint > Color. Then, the next time you drag that node onto the canvas, it’ll automatically be tinted with that color. (Also be able to select multiple nodes in the library, and change their default tint all at once.)
And perhaps Vuo could include default tints for some nodes, similar to the tints used in Vuo’s example compositions.
I’m all about default tints — I found QC compositions very easy to read at a glance when they were coloured based on their function (rendering, user input, etc.). It would be nice to see this implemented in Vuo.
Building on @smokris’s suggestion, how about Vuo ships with a default tinting scheme, but also with some other schemes including at least one colour-blind friendly scheme, and a no-default-tinting scheme. If none of them fit the user’s fancy, he/she could implement his/her own scheme. (I’m thinking a rough analogue to code editor themes.)
Personally, the way I use code editor color schemes is (1) pick a dark-background scheme that I like and always use that, except (2) in bright sunlight, switch to a light-background scheme.
For those use cases, I feel like the per-node default tint settings proposed by @smokris, in conjunction with Vuo Editor’s existing light/dark modes, would work pretty well. It would give you color-blind-friendly settings to start off with and let you customize. If you wanted all gray, you could select all nodes in the Node Library and remove their tints all at once.
The tint settings would be significantly simpler to implement than color schemes, but there are some things that it wouldn’t handle as well. If you run Vuo Editor on multiple computers, sharing the same tint settings between computers would mean copying the Preferences file. Sharing tint settings between different people would be pretty hacky, as you’d have to edit the Preferences file. (Maybe we could address that with an import/export option.) You couldn’t easily switch between color schemes.
How do you envision using color schemes?
A Scriptable Editor and node attribute allowing for any colour not just 8 tints would solve all these problems and more. If scripts were easily assigned to Function keys you could assign:
Editor macros/rules/agents would solve most of these issues, also discussed on Scriptable Editor feature request.