================================================= FullPalette 40.18 (1.10.97) by Massimo Tantignone ================================================= INTRODUCTION FullPalette is a patch that, together with a preferences editor, allows you to define and save ALL the 256 Workbench colors and not just eight of them as the standard Palette editor does. You can decide exactly which colors are to be "locked", and thus never modified by programs running on the Workbench screen, and which colors instead are to be left "free" for IPrefs and other applications. Among other advantages, this makes the managing of icons much easier; using FullPalette you can, for example, have icons with any number of colors without risking to see some of them change just because you view a picture with MultiView on the Workbench screen. You could also set colors 4-7 to always be the same as colors 252-255. FullPalette also has a button strip to easily perform editing actions such as "Copy", "Swap" and "Spread". For the purpose of editing the Workbench palette, FullPalette can wholly replace the standard "Palette" preferences editor, whose settings file (palette.prefs) it continues to maintain for compatibility, although FullPalette also uses a custom file. The patch runs alongside IPrefs with no conflicts. INSTALLATION Installing FullPalette is very simple. You only have to do three things: 1) Copy the FPPrefs program into a directory that is in the system path (for example C:) 2) Insert into your Startup-sequence, IMMEDIATELY AFTER IPREFS, the following line: Run > NIL: FPPrefs 3) Copy the FullPalette editor (with its icon) into the Prefs drawer of your Workbench partition. Now you can reboot to activate the patch, then play with the editor to edit and save the Workbench palette according to your preferences. The Workbench screen will use your palette each time it (re)opens itself. Note: you CAN'T call FPPrefs from the User-startup; if you do, some images (especially backgrounds) on the Workbench screen could be rendered with the wrong colors. USAGE Once you have the FPPrefs patch running in the background you can use the FullPalette editor to define your palette. To edit the entire palette of the Workbench screen, you should first open it with the maximum number of colors available (256 for AGA and graphic cards, 16 for ECS). This way, you can edit all colors; then, each time the Workbench screen will open at less than its maximum depth, only some of the colors will be used. The FullPalette GUI is very intuitive. You have some gadgets to perform actions like "Copy" or "Spread" at the top of the window; below there is a palette gadget for choosing the palette entry to edit, and a cycle gadget to specify if you want the current color to be "Free" or "Locked". There are also two text indicators with the logical and physical number of the current color. The logical number ("Screen color") is the color index in the current screen's palette, whereas the physical number ("Palette color") always refers to the color index in the full 256-color palette. Three sliders allow you to modify the Red, Green and Blue components of the current color, and the gadgets at the bottom of the window give you the option to Save, Use or Cancel the current settings. You can use some tool types in FullPalette's icon (or keywords on the command line): SCREEN tells FullPalette to open on a custom screen FONTNAME= specifies the name of the font for the editor window FONTSIZE= specifies the size of the font for the editor window Furthermore, the editor recognizes the usual preferences tool types, such as EDIT, SAVE, USE and CREATEICONS=. Starting with version 40.14, FullPalette allows you to choose the precision of the color remapping for Workbench backdrop images. You can select the wanted precision within the menu "Options"; if you choose "Ignore", FullPalette won't interfere with the remapping at all. Note that any change takes effect only when the Workbench screen is reopened. BEHAVIOR WHEN STARTING By default, FullPalette immediately sets the Workbench colors to your preferences when it starts. At boot time, this has the side effect of opening the Workbench screen if it isn't already open. You can tell it to wait until the Workbench screen (re)opens itself by setting the environment variable "ENV:FullPalette/Action". With the command "SetEnv FullPalette/Action IMMEDIATE" you tell FullPalette to immediately set the colors when it is launched, thus opening the Workbench screen if it isn't already open. This is the default. With the command "SetEnv FullPalette/Action DEFERRED" you tell FullPalette to wait until the Workbench screen opens by itself before setting the colors. Once you have set the variable, make sure you copy them into ENVARC: with, for instance, the command "Copy ENV:FullPalette/#? ENVARC:FullPalette" (the ENVARC:FullPalette directory must be created first). Note: the "deferred" behavior is experimental, normally it works well but it seems that once in a while it can lock up the screen at boot time. If this happens, just do a manual reset (CTRL-Amiga-Amiga). If it happens too often on your machine, return to the default behavior (immediate) by deleting the environment variable. THE COLOR MODE You can set the environment variable "ENV:FullPalette/ColorMode" to choose how FullPalette should remap the full (physical) 256-color palette to the current (logical) color palette of the Workbench screen, if it has less than 256 colors. With the command "SetEnv FullPalette/ColorMode WORKBENCH" you tell FullPalette to set the current palette's first half to the colors at the beginning of the full 256-color palette, and the second half to the colors at the end. In other words, a 32-color Workbench screen will get its first 16 colors from the first 16 colors of the 256-color palette, and its second 16 colors from the LAST 16 colors of the 256-color palette. With the command "SetEnv FullPalette/ColorMode LINEAR" you tell FullPalette to set the current palette to the first colors of the 256-color palette, except for the last 4 color which will be always taken from the end of the 256-color palette. This way, a 32-color Workbench screen will get its first 28 colors from the first 28 colors of the 256-color palette, and its last 4 colors from the last 4 colors of the 256-color palette. Either way, this is compatible with IPrefs, which uses the notorious "first 4/last 4" color scheme. COLOR COPYING Although it isn't really necessary (you could do it by hand), starting with version 40.18 FullPalette offers the automatic copying of the last four colors in the palette to the second four colors (colors 4-7). To achieve this, just set the environment variable "FullPalette/CopyColors" to "TRUE". It is read at launch time only, so for it to take effect you must first reboot your Amiga; furthermore, the copying takes place only for those of the destination colors (4-7) which are "Locked". Note: in this mode, the settings for colors 4-7 shown in the FullPalette editor are ignored. NOTES At the moment FullPalette doesn't have a color wheel, and probably it never will, as it would be impossible to allocate all the necessary pens for it from the same palette the wheel would be used to modify. From my personal experience, however, the color wheel is rather useless in an application like this one (a palette editor for the Workbench screen). Furthermore, at the moment it also lacks an HSB mode as an alternative to the RGB one; if I'll receive enough requests, I'll implement it for sure. Important: if the cycle gadget of the editor says "Free", this does NOT mean that the selected color is _currently_ free, but just that it will never be locked by FullPalette! However, it's possibile to know which pens are currently free or allocated: by pressing any SHIFT key while selecting (with a mouse click) a palette color, if the corresponding pen is allocated you'll see the screen flash. CHANGES 40.12 First public beta release 40.13 Some bug-fixes: · Now FPPrefs doesn't change a palette entry if it wasn't saved as "Locked". · Now FPPrefs does nothing when OpenWorkBench() is called with the Workbench screen already open. · The FullPalette editor now saves and loads only the colors which are "Locked". 40.14 Bug-fix: · Now FPPrefs should work better with NewIcons. New: · Added (experimental) option for choosing the precision of the Workbench pattern remapping. Let me know if it works! 40.15 Bug-fix: · There was a bug in the italian .catalog file. New: · Now the editor allocates the needed stack by itself. 40.16 Bumped revision to 16 for the Aminet release 40.17 Bug-fix: · Fixed a bug in the editor, wasn't always leaving enough space for the slider level numbers. New: · Added the (still experimental) ability to defer the setting of colors at boot time, thus avoiding an unwanted opening of the Workbench screen. 40.18 Bug-fixes: · Added a workaround for a bug in the V39 gadtools.library concerning the displaying of the contents of the color number indicators. Hope it works! · The "Options->WBPattern remapping" menu is now correctly updated when you select "Last saved" from the "Edit" menu. New: · Added "Ignore" to the pattern remapping options. · A new environment variable now allows to have automatic copying of the last four palette colors to colors 4-7. CONCLUSION I have used FullPalette on my system for many months now, and it never gave me any trouble. However, this doesn't necessarily mean it is bug-free. So, if you should encounter any problem with FullPalette, don't hesitate to contact me. For any comment, suggestion or bug report about FullPalette, write to: Massimo Tantignone Via Campagnoli, 4 28100 Novara (NO) ITALY E-mail: tanti@intercom.it I can't guarantee an immediate reply to everyone, but I'll certainly read all of your mails.