Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: WB 1.3 palette & showmem don't mix
Message-ID: <77233@sun.uucp>
Date: 11 Nov 88 19:33:02 GMT
References: <254@sed170.HAC.COM>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Distribution: na
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 34

In article <254@sed170.HAC.COM> lee@sed170.UUCP (John Lee (ird)) writes:
>Browsing through my newly acquired 1.3 Extras disk (thank you Commodore, CATS,
>developers and everyone else who helped bring 1.3 to fruition), I noticed
>that with showmem (or whatever the program in Extras to display the chip mem
>freelist is called) running, palette promptly exits when started.  No error
>message, no GURU, no apparent loss of memory (I think), no nothing.  

It isn't a bug it's a feature :-). Palette is a special program, in that it
opens itself on whichever screen is frontmost on the display. When showmem
is running it's screen is frontmost, palette tries to open on it, finds
out it is to small and gives up. When showmem isn't running the frontmost
screen is the workbench whereupon it starts up as you would expect.

WHAT THIS MEANS:

Is that you can use Palette as a standard color requester in  *any* program.
(that has a large enough screen :-)). I have a program called "FunKeys"
which is part of the TxEd package from Microsmiths, and it lets me specify
a couple of "hotkey" combinations. One of them is setup to run pallete.
Now when I am in VLT, or DPaint, or MaxiPlan I press the hotkey and
poof color requester appears. I also use this technique in my Life program
when you select the menu item "Change Colors" it execs a copy of palette.

Once the colors are set I save them from the viewport. Simple no?

It also lets you "steal" colors. Say you run Aegis Draw+ and decide you
really like the interlace colors. Well now all you do is pull down the draw
screen, start palette (which will appear on that screen) and look at the
colors and read off the hex values. All in all it is *quite* useful.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.