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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Color palettes services...
From:       Dave Leigh <dave.leigh () cratchit ! org>
Date:       2002-07-14 16:00:24
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I may have misunderstood your intention, but if so, my reply should make it 
clear how I've misunderstood you, and you can correct me.

On Sunday 14 July 2002 04:40, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Hi!
>
> This is just for the record, don't have any time to code it, but in
> these days where patents are given for anything I wanted to spread this
> idea, maybe you even would like to discuss it :):

Actually, the idea's nearly as old as color displays, so it's probably safe 
from patents. It's simply the way palettes work. The only patent you'd have 
to worry about is a application patent, and those are crap.

Getting past the originality of it all, I sense a couple of things about what 
you're saying that go beyond regular use of a color palette. There can also 
be confusion of scope in this discussion, since "palette" could mean the 
colors assigned to the display as a whole, or simply the subset of colors 
I've chosen to use in my document or widget set. These should be discussed 
separately, 

With the way palettes were originally implemented (for a display) if I change 
a palette color value, everything on the screen drawn with that palette color 
changes. This ISN'T what you'd typically WANT to happen in a windowing 
system. Document colors should remain the same regardless of the color of the 
widgets. Widget colors should be independent of documents. Document authors 
typically only care about the absolute values, since they want YOU to see 
what THEY created.

It doesn't do to change the palette in an attempt to "spread this 
information... to already created documents." because unless the palette's 
absolute values are included in the document, MY palette isn't YOUR palette. 
You'd STILL have to edit every doc to "spread the information." A palette 
(meaning color references, as opposed to a table of colors actually used) 
gives you no benefit over, say, searching for "#FFFFFF" and replacing all 
instances with "#AAAAAA". Now THAT could be done with a "color replacer" that 
could be included in any KDE app. It could even be done with an external 
applet that works on groups of files. I think this is more useful from an 
authoring standpoint because it eliminates the chance of unintended changes 
to existing work. Anybody who's worked extensively with Microsoft Word's 
paragraph styles knows exactly what I mean.

Speaking of such things... I don't think it's necessary to return both the 
palette_id and color_id. Since the whole point of a palette is to "abstract" 
the color selection, any application requestion a palette_id is not going to 
care what value is assigned to it. If you want a color_id, then actual value 
can be retrieved separately. For example, I want to change my widget colors. 
I call the color palette service, which displays the color picker dialog and 
returns a palette_id. I'm editing a document, I call the same service with a 
parameter that tells it to return the absolute value instead.


-- 
Dave Leigh, Consulting Systems Analyst
Cratchit.org
  http://www.cratchit.org
  864-427-7008 (direct)
  AIM or Yahoo!: leighdf
  MSN: leighdf29379@hotmail.com
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Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

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