> I need to extract RGB information for each of the colors defined in the
> PageStream4.colors file. How can I do this?

>> Still, the question remains, what is the original user trying to do?

A good question!

I have written FWCalendar, (available from Aminet or from the "Apps" link of
http://home.earthlink.net/~goertz/Ron/) an ARexx application that generates
calendars using (originally and still) Final Writer (hence the FW) and (for the
last year or so) PageStream. The most recent incarnation uses ClassAct/AWNPipe.
For selecting colors, I am using a "listbrowser." In the listbrowser, the first
column lists the names of the available colors, while the second column shows a
sample of the color (if you have FW, you can see how this works). For
PageStream, the "available colors" are those the user has defined in the
.colors file (since passing a color name is necessary in various commands, and
I assume the name has to be one present in the .colors file).

In order for me to create the column of color samples, I need to pass ClassAct
(via AWNPipe) the RGB values corresponding to the names of the colors in the
first column. I was able to extract the color names from the .colors file
(harder than it might at first seem, given the way accented characters are
stored), but have not been able to extract the color information.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Ron

> > I need to extract RGB information for each of the colors defined in the
> > PageStream4.colors file. How can I do this?
>
> >> Still, the question remains, what is the original user trying to do?
>
>A good question!
>
>I have written FWCalendar, (available from Aminet or from the "Apps" link of
><http://home.earthlink.net/~goertz/Ron/)>http://home.earthlink.net/~goertz/Ron/)
>an ARexx application that generates
>calendars using (originally and still) Final Writer (hence the FW) and
>(for the
>last year or so) PageStream. The most recent incarnation uses
>ClassAct/AWNPipe.
>For selecting colors, I am using a "listbrowser." In the listbrowser, the
>first
>column lists the names of the available colors, while the second column
>shows a
>sample of the color (if you have FW, you can see how this works). For
>PageStream, the "available colors" are those the user has defined in the
>.colors file (since passing a color name is necessary in various commands, and
>I assume the name has to be one present in the .colors file).

Well, for PageStream addons calling via C, this is a relatively easy task.
However, no script (arexx) commands exist to get color info from color styles.

If you want to make the script dependant on 4.0r9 and above, I can add some
calls to enable you to get this info from PageStream for the current
document. If not, then I can give you info on parsing the file itself. Not
a pretty task, but doable.

>In order for me to create the column of color samples, I need to pass ClassAct
>(via AWNPipe) the RGB values corresponding to the names of the colors in the
>first column. I was able to extract the color names from the .colors file
>(harder than it might at first seem, given the way accented characters are
>stored), but have not been able to extract the color information.

Yes, we use a 7bit binary stream for unicode characters. This makes it more
compact than 2 bytes per character!

>Thanks for all the help so far!
>
>Ron

Deron Kazmaier - support@softlogik.com
Grasshopper Publishing LLC -http://www.softlogik.com
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