Colour palette properties
Plotting uses the concept of a palette to determine the colours for it's pens. A palette is simply a list of colour names associated with a particular colour, specified as RGB triples. For example, the colour 'black' has an RGB value of (0,0,0), while 'white' has a value of (255, 255, 255). All other colours are somewhere in between.
To run this function: Choose Plotting > Plotting colours > Colour palette properties, or...
- In the Function Chooser, type PLOT PALETTE EDIT, and press ENTER.
By specifying more than one palette, different sets of colours may be used. For example, there are two default palettes. Firstly is the crayola colour set, which is the standard set of colours for Surpac 2000. The other default palette is the HPGL/2 standard palette, which is used by all HPGL/2 plotters. Therefore, by using the HPGL/2 palette, you can accurately determine the colour that will be output to paper. All that is needed is a wall chart showing the HPGL/2 colours (usually plotted as a demo from the plotter), and you can then use exactly the colour you want to plot. Simply select the HPGL/2 palette when using the Pen File Editor, and the selected pens will match exactly with the wall chart.
If you are in plot preview, any changes made to the palette will be automatically updated on the screen. The Palette Editor form will appear.
Palette Name
Enter the name of the palette here. The browser displays all of the currently available palette files. Palettes are stored in your SSI_PLOTTING: directory. If you enter a nonexistent name in this field, then a new palette will be created. There is no need to place SSI_PLOTTING: in front of the name, the new palette will automatically be placed in the correct directory.
If the palette is an existing palette, then the scrolling region below will fill with the values of the current palette once you leave this field.
NOTE: If the palette contains a large number of values, the scrolling region may take some time to fill. Please be patient.
Name
This field is where you enter the name of the colour (what the colour will be referenced by). Colour names should not contain spaces. The name can be either character (in the case of the crayola palette) or numeric (in the case of the HPGL/2 palette).
Red, Green, Blue
These are the colour definition. All colours can be created by mixing a Red, Green and Blue component. These colours are defined as integer values between 0 and 255. A value of 0 means none of that particular colour, which 255 is the maximum brightness of that colour. The colour created by the R, G, B triple selected will be displayed as the background of the name field. Please note - colours may appear slightly different on the screen and on paper, due to the difference between displaying light and ink colours.
Choose Apply to save the palette to the palette file.
Results
The new or modified palette is saved to the SSI_PLOTTING: directory, and is called <palette name>.pal.