| 1 | Pynche - The PYthonically Natural Color and Hue Editor
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| 2 |
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| 3 | Contact: Barry A. Warsaw
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| 4 | Email: [email protected]
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| 5 | Version: 1.3
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| 6 |
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| 7 | Introduction
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| 8 |
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| 9 | Pynche is a color editor based largely on a similar program that I
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| 10 | originally wrote back in 1987 for the Sunview window system. That
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| 11 | editor was called ICE, the Interactive Color Editor. I'd always
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| 12 | wanted to port this program to X but didn't feel like hacking X
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| 13 | and C code to do it. Fast forward many years, to where Python +
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| 14 | Tkinter provides such a nice programming environment, with enough
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| 15 | power, that I finally buckled down and re-implemented it. I
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| 16 | changed the name because these days, too many other systems have
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| 17 | the acronym `ICE'.
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| 18 |
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| 19 | Pynche should work with any variant of Python after 1.5.2
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| 20 | (e.g. 2.0.1 and 2.1.1), using Tk 8.0.x. It's been tested on
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| 21 | Solaris 2.6, Windows NT 4, and various Linux distros. You'll want
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| 22 | to be sure to have at least Tk 8.0.3 for Windows. Also, Pynche is
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| 23 | very colormap intensive, so it doesn't work very well on 8-bit
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| 24 | graphics cards; 24bit+ graphics cards are so cheap these days,
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| 25 | I'll probably never "fix" that.
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| 26 |
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| 27 | Pynche must find a text database of colors names in order to
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| 28 | provide `nearest' color matching. Pynche is distributed with an
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| 29 | rgb.txt file from the X11R6.4 distribution for this reason, along
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| 30 | with other "Web related" database (see below). You can use a
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| 31 | different file with the -d option. The file xlicense.txt contains
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| 32 | the license only for rgb.txt and both files are in the X/
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| 33 | subdirectory.
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| 34 |
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| 35 | Pynche is pronounced: Pin'-chee
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| 36 |
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| 37 |
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| 38 | Running Standalone
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| 39 |
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| 40 | On Unix, start it by running the `pynche' script. On Windows, run
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| 41 | pynche.pyw to inhibit the console window. When run from the
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| 42 | command line, the following options are recognized:
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| 43 |
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| 44 | --database file
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| 45 | -d file
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| 46 | Alternate location of the color database file. Without this
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| 47 | option, the first valid file found will be used (see below).
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| 48 |
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| 49 | --initfile file
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| 50 | -i file
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| 51 | Alternate location of the persistent initialization file. See
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| 52 | the section on Persistency below.
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| 53 |
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| 54 | --ignore
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| 55 | -X
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| 56 | Ignore the persistent initialization file when starting up.
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| 57 | Pynche will still write the current option settings to the
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| 58 | persistent init file when it quits.
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| 59 |
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| 60 | --help
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| 61 | -h
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| 62 | Print the help message.
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| 63 |
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| 64 | initialcolor
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| 65 | a Tk color name or #rrggbb color spec to be used as the
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| 66 | initially selected color. This overrides any color saved in
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| 67 | the persistent init file. Since `#' needs to be escaped in
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| 68 | many shells, it is optional in the spec (e.g. #45dd1f is the
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| 69 | same as 45dd1f).
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| 70 |
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| 71 |
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| 72 | Running as a Modal Dialog
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| 73 |
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| 74 | Pynche can be run as a modal dialog, inside another application,
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| 75 | say as a general color chooser. In fact, Grail 0.6 uses Pynche
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| 76 | and a future version of IDLE may as well. Pynche supports the API
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| 77 | implemented by the Tkinter standard tkColorChooser module, with a
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| 78 | few changes as described below. By importing pyColorChooser from
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| 79 | the Pynche package, you can run
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| 80 |
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| 81 | pyColorChooser.askcolor()
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| 82 |
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| 83 | which will popup Pynche as a modal dialog, and return the selected
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| 84 | color.
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| 85 |
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| 86 | There are some UI differences when running as a modal
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| 87 | vs. standalone. When running as a modal, there is no "Quit" menu
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| 88 | item under the "File" menu. Instead there are "Okay" and "Cancel"
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| 89 | buttons.
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| 90 |
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| 91 | When "Okay" is hit, askcolor() returns the tuple
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| 92 |
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| 93 | ((r, g, b), "name")
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| 94 |
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| 95 | where r, g, and b are red, green, and blue color values
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| 96 | respectively (in the range 0 to 255). "name" will be a color name
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| 97 | from the color database if there is an exact match, otherwise it
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| 98 | will be an X11 color spec of the form "#rrggbb". Note that this
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| 99 | is different than tkColorChooser, which doesn't know anything
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| 100 | about color names.
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| 101 |
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| 102 | askcolor() supports the following optional keyword arguments:
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| 103 |
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| 104 | color
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| 105 | the color to set as the initial selected color
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| 106 |
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| 107 | master[*]
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| 108 | the master window to use as the parent of the modal
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| 109 | dialog. Without this argument, pyColorChooser will create
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| 110 | its own Tkinter.Tk instance as the master. This may not
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| 111 | be what you want.
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| 112 |
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| 113 | databasefile
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| 114 | similar to the --database option, the value must be a
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| 115 | file name
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| 116 |
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| 117 | initfile[*]
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| 118 | similar to the --initfile option, the value must be a
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| 119 | file name
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| 120 |
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| 121 | ignore[*]
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| 122 | similar to the --ignore flag, the value is a boolean
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| 123 |
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| 124 | wantspec
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| 125 | When this is true, the "name" field in the return tuple
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| 126 | will always be a color spec of the form "#rrggbb". It
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| 127 | will not return a color name even if there is a match;
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| 128 | this is so pyColorChooser can exactly match the API of
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| 129 | tkColorChooser.
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| 130 |
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| 131 | [*] these arguments must be specified the first time
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| 132 | askcolor() is used and cannot be changed on subsequent calls.
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| 133 |
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| 134 |
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| 135 | The Colorstrip Window
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| 136 |
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| 137 | The top part of the main Pynche window contains the "variation
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| 138 | strips". Each strip contains a number of "color chips". The
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| 139 | strips always indicate the currently selected color by a highlight
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| 140 | rectangle around the selected color chip, with an arrow pointing
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| 141 | to the chip. Each arrow has an associated number giving you the
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| 142 | color value along the variation's axis. Each variation strip
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| 143 | shows you the colors that are reachable from the selected color by
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| 144 | varying just one axis of the color solid.
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| 145 |
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| 146 | For example, when the selected color is (in Red/Green/Blue
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| 147 | notation) 127/127/127, the Red Variations strip shows you every
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| 148 | color in the range 0/127/127 to 255/127/127. Similarly for the
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| 149 | green and blue axes. You can select any color by clicking on its
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| 150 | chip. This will update the highlight rectangle and the arrow, as
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| 151 | well as other displays in Pynche.
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| 152 |
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| 153 | Click on "Update while dragging" if you want Pynche to update the
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| 154 | selected color while you drag along any variation strip (this will
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| 155 | be a bit slower). Click on "Hexadecimal" to display the arrow
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| 156 | numbers in hex.
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| 157 |
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| 158 | There are also two shortcut buttons in this window, which
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| 159 | auto-select Black (0/0/0) and White (255/255/255).
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| 160 |
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| 161 |
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| 162 | The Proof Window
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| 163 |
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| 164 | In the lower left corner of the main window you see two larger
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| 165 | color chips. The Selected chip shows you a larger version of the
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| 166 | color selected in the variation strips, along with its X11 color
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| 167 | specification. The Nearest chip shows you the closest color in
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| 168 | the X11 database to the selected color, giving its X11 color
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| 169 | specification, and below that, its X11 color name. When the
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| 170 | Selected chip color exactly matches the Nearest chip color, you
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| 171 | will see the color name appear below the color specification for
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| 172 | the Selected chip.
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| 173 |
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| 174 | Clicking on the Nearest color chip selects that color. Color
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| 175 | distance is calculated in the 3D space of the RGB color solid and
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| 176 | if more than one color name is the same distance from the selected
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| 177 | color, the first one found will be chosen.
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| 178 |
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| 179 | Note that there may be more than one X11 color name for the same
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| 180 | RGB value. In that case, the first one found in the text database
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| 181 | is designated the "primary" name, and this is shown under the
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| 182 | Nearest chip. The other names are "aliases" and they are visible
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| 183 | in the Color List Window (see below).
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| 184 |
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| 185 | Both the color specifications and color names are selectable for
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| 186 | copying and pasting into another window.
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