code for loading and saving ted21 color palettes

[AdamStrangeParticipant]

With ted21 I am trying to be as open as possible.

Here is the first code to load and save color palettes

a color palette is a block of colors (up 256) with additions 8×8 grid information

The file extension is .mx2palette

layout of the saved file is:

String:”mx2palette”

UInt:count

Uint:gridx

Uint:gridy

colors. these are saved as

float:red

float:green

float:blue

float:alpha

 

and here is the loading code

Monkey

method LoadPalette( path:string ) Local file := Stream.Open( path, "r" ) If Not file Then Return Local header:string = file.ReadCString() If header = "mx2palette" Then Local count:int = file.ReadUInt() If count < 256 Then Local gridX:int = file.ReadUInt() If gridX < 8 Then Local gridY:int = file.ReadUInt() If gridY < 8 Then Local k:int Local red:float Local green:float Local blue:float Local alpha:float _gridCount = count GridX = gridX GridY = gridY For k = 0 Until count red = file.ReadFloat() green = file.ReadFloat() blue = file.ReadFloat() alpha = file.ReadFloat() _color[ k ] = New Color( red, green, blue, alpha ) Next End If End If End If End If file.Close() RequestRender() End method

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method LoadPalette( path:string ) Local file := Stream.Open( path, "r" ) If Not file Then Return Local header:string = file.ReadCString() If header = "mx2palette" Then Local count:int = file.ReadUInt() If count < 256 Then Local gridX:int = file.ReadUInt() If gridX < 8 Then Local gridY:int = file.ReadUInt() If gridY < 8 Then Local k:int Local red:float Local green:float Local blue:float Local alpha:float _gridCount = count GridX = gridX GridY = gridY For k = 0 Until count red = file.ReadFloat() green = file.ReadFloat() blue = file.ReadFloat() alpha = file.ReadFloat() _color[ k ] = New Color( red, green, blue, alpha ) Next End If End If End If End If   file.Close()   RequestRender() End method

and here is the saving code

Monkey

method SavePalette( path:string ) Local file := Stream.Open( path, "w" ) If Not file Then Return Local header:string = "mx2palette" file.WriteCString( header ) file.WriteUInt( _gridCount ) file.WriteUInt( _gridX ) file.WriteUInt( _gridY ) Local k:int Local col:uint For k = 0 until _gridCount file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].R ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].G ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].B ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].A ) Next file.Close() End method

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method SavePalette( path:string ) Local file := Stream.Open( path, "w" ) If Not file Then Return Local header:string = "mx2palette" file.WriteCString( header ) file.WriteUInt( _gridCount ) file.WriteUInt( _gridX ) file.WriteUInt( _gridY )   Local k:int Local col:uint For k = 0 until _gridCount file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].R ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].G ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].B ) file.WriteFloat( _color[ k ].A ) Next   file.Close() End method

[degacParticipant]

Ok, some (stupid maybe!) questions :D!
1. what is for the ‘grid’?
2. why choose a proprietary (even if public) format and not use the .json system – already built in MX2? Considering the possibility to open them directly in TED2?

[AdamStrangeParticipant]

simple. speed

grid is the uxcolorgrid control

as to not using .json:

text is a very poor storage format for anything other than text. you need to parse it and it also needs carful construction.

It is also editable. which means unknown errors creep in

 

finally. There is no reason for the color table to be readable by humans. its a color! in the same way as a sound is stored in the best format for it, etc

 

They can be opened in ted2. but Mark will have to provide that.

 

let say the read file has a grid of 7,3

the shown grid will be 7 cell wide, and 3 cells high with a total of 21 color cells

It would look like this:

Attachments:

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   Screen-Shot-2016-08-27-at-12.34.33.png
   

[degacParticipant]

Ok, understood what is the ‘grid’
It would better if the ‘grid layout’ will be managed automatically, and not based on what is ‘stored’… I mean, I need the colors, not the way they are shown.
Yes, I admit json is quite a bit ‘redundant’ for low information.
for a plain text I would use ToARGB and FromARGB method to store colors… it should be faster (in reading/writing I mean).

[AdamStrangeParticipant]

Here’s a thing. I did initially write the input/output with ToARGB and FromARGB.

But… for some really odd reason ToARGB never gave the correct output, so I went with just writing  the direct values instead.

the gridx and gridy values can be completely ignored. They are there for display only and to prevent problems with counts that could be multiples. E.G. a count of 36. is that 6×6 or 4X8 or 3×12, etc

similarly a count of 12 is that 3×4 or 4×3.

So to just read the colors,

read the header, the count and then ignore the next two read in numbers and then just read the colors.

 

Here’s a shot of the new palette grid view in operation with Ted21. You can see the color panel is also open. pressing “use color” will change the current selected color in the palette and make the document “dirty” so it is automatically saved

Attachments:

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   Screen-Shot-2016-08-27-at-14.05.02.png
   

[degacParticipant]

But… for some really odd reason ToARGB never gave the correct output, so I went with just writing  the direct values instead.

What does this means? There’s an error in the conversion?

 

Anyway, as user, I would like to ‘save’ my preferred color (maybe the first 8/16 etc).

[AdamStrangeParticipant]

i think i used something like colout:uint = colin.ToARGB and it never set.

The other thing was when I looked at the code I expected it to be ABGR and it wasn’t it was the reversed ARGB. which looks fine on paper, but is actually reversed in code.

OK Saving and using color palettes of different sizes – no problem. Here’s a few different ones. I tried to be as flexible as I could be. It also shows where the grid properties are used.

Attachments:

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   Screen-Shot-2016-08-28-at-06.56.42.png
   

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   Screen-Shot-2016-08-28-at-06.57.03.png
   

3. 

   Screen-Shot-2016-08-28-at-06.57.24.png
   

4. 

   Screen-Shot-2016-08-28-at-06.57.40.png
   

[AdamStrangeParticipant]

Here’s the code from std/color.monkey2

Monkey

#rem monkeydoc Converts the color to 32 bit ARGB format. #end Method ToARGB:UInt() Return UInt(a*255) Shl 24 | UInt(r*255) Shl 16 | UInt(g*255) Shl 8 | UInt(b*255) End

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#rem monkeydoc Converts the color to 32 bit ARGB format. #end Method ToARGB:UInt() Return UInt(a*255) Shl 24 | UInt(r*255) Shl 16 | UInt(g*255) Shl 8 | UInt(b*255) End

Great. But it really should be this:

Monkey

Return UInt(a*255) Shl 24 | UInt(b*255) Shl 16 | UInt(g*255) Shl 8 | UInt(r*255)

1	Return UInt(a*255) Shl 24 | UInt(b*255) Shl 16 | UInt(g*255) Shl 8 | UInt(r*255)

where the first byte is the red byte, the second green, third blue and finally alpha

This makes it really ABGR. but you read from right to left so it is actually RGBA which is the proper representation.

If I recall correctly, Microsoft had to rewrite an entire windows codebase because of this (long before xp).

[Author]

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