Each database stores a set of colour schemes, that describe how controls of a particular type should appear. Controls are not coloured individually but must use one of the colour schemes. To activate the colour scheme editor:
Select Colour Scheme Editor from the Options menu
Press F7 when you are editing a map or menu page. The Colour Scheme Editor will open the colour scheme for the currently selected map (or for any selected control on the map) for editing.
In both cases the Colour Scheme Editor dialog appears:
In the Type list, select the type of control for which you want to create or edit a colour scheme, for example Map
In the Scheme list, select New Scheme to create a new scheme or select one of the existing schemes to edit or delete.
To create a colour scheme that is a variation of an existing scheme, in the Base list, select the scheme to use as the basis for the new scheme, for example Default. The implication of this is that any elements to which you do not explicitly assign colours, will inherit their colours from the base scheme. Basing your scheme on another is completely optional; you can select <None> if the scheme does not inherit any colours.
In the Scheme Colours part of the dialog, the different elements of the control are listed adjacent to coloured boxes. (The control elements are organised into flat (two-dimensional) and, if supported, 3D (three-dimensional) appearance. Where 3D is supported, clicking the 3D button, displays the 3D control elements, and clicking Flat, redisplays the flat control elements)
To change the colour of a control element, click on its coloured box: a red line appears around the box and the right-side of the dialog changes to show a correspondingly coloured box, also outlined in red. The right-side of the dialog is showing the current colour assignment of the control element.
There are four ways to change the assignment, you can:
(If you click using the right mouse button, the right-side of the dialog does not change; allowing you to retain the previous context)
Change elements as required until you have modified the scheme to your liking
To save the colour scheme click Save As, type the name of the new scheme and click OK
To delete an existing scheme click Remove.
No check is made whether controls that use this scheme still exist - if a control uses a missing colour scheme, default colours will be used instead.
To exit the colour scheme editor click Close
For details of assigning the new scheme to controls see Selecting a Control's Colour Scheme
Click on the DP4 tab at the top of the right-side of the dialog. Use the << and >> buttons to page through the DP4 master palette, and click on one of the displayed colours to assign it to the currently selected element of the control.
The DP4 master palette colours are either hard-coded colours with titles such as Black, Dark Blue, Dull Green and so on, or colours that correspond to Windows System colours with titles such as Scroll bar, Button face, Disabled text and so on.
Any change to the Windows System colours immediately changes the associated DP4 master palette colours.
The advantage of using colours from the DP4 master palette that map into the Windows palette is that the colour of screen elements in the application will change dynamically to match the user's selected Windows colour scheme. Beware of using a mix of mapped and hard coded colours in the same colour scheme. This can cause unexpected results if the user uses an unusal Windows Colour scheme. It is a good idea to test the effect of changig the Windows colour scheme on your application.
The master palette is stored in the userdata.sys file, and is also read from the system database and written to menudata.sys when a user logs onto the DP4 menu. In principle different users can have different master palettes, but at present the only means of creating master palettes is to use BROWSER. Using different master palettes is worth considering if your application needs to run on screens with very different colour capabilities.
Click on the Custom tab at the top of the right-side of the dialog. A dialog appears holding a palette of boxes, some of which may be coloured.
To assign a previously created custom colour, click on its box. To create a new custom colour, click on a blank box, then click the Add Custom Colours button.
Use the standard Windows dialog that appears to create your own custom colour. Click OK to return to the DP4 custom palette, where the colour you defined should now be available.
Click its box to assign the custom colour to the currently selected element of the control.
Currently MapEdit does remember custom colours from one session to the next. However, if you have used a custom colour in a saved scheme, then selecting that scheme and clicking on the appropriate element's colour box will add the colour to the custom colours automatically. In addition you can store custom colours to be automatically displayed in the Custom page, each time you run the Map Editor, in the [CustomColours] section of MAPEDIT.INI as shown in the example below:
[CustomColours]
RGB1=128,64,128
RGB2=255,240,240
RGB3=192,224,192
...
Each RGBn=r,g,b defines a colour. The three comma-separated numbers following the equals sign correspond to the red, green and blue components of the colour, using the standard Windows format (a number between 0 and 255). For successive colours, you must increment the number n, appended to RGB, by one; the Map Editor uses the convention that the first missing entry indicates the end of the list.
Click the Special tab at the top of the right-side of the dialog, and click the box entitled Default (Use Base System). The currently inherited colour is shown in this box.
Click the Special tab as above, but click the box entitled Transparent. This option is useful for the backgrounds of static controls, which need to display the same colour as the underlying map.