ThePalette Visual Studio Add-in

• Download demo project - 90.9 Kb
• Download add-in binaries - 62.2 Kb
• Download stand-alone binaries - 47.5 Kb

Introduction

Many of us often need to work with color macros, inserting them into our code one and a million times over while we look for a copasetic combination of alizarin crimson, scheveningen green and indanthrene blue. Catering to this madness, there are scores of color picker utilities out there... and some of them right here, in the CodeProject.

Yet, to my knowledge, there are just a handful of color picker add-ins, and the difference matters. For years, I have used Alex Vallat's ColourPicker Add-in and have come to completely rely on it. This wonderful little add-in grabs the color of the selection I've made or automatically scans for the boundaries of the RGB macro where the caret was. After I've chosen a color from the standard Windows color dialog (or with the dropper), the ColourPicker inserts the RGB macro directly into my code.

Convenient in-friggin'-deed, my friends.

Well, as it happens with software that is used regularly, one often dreams of tweaking it one's own way to suit one's own peculiar conception of it all. And so, the mind departs from the task at hand, floating as it were in zero-g reverie, visiting rarely activated neural assemblies of suspect dendritic affiliation, skipping along ever-recursive paths, whistling outside the rhythm of lucid discourse, and, in short, ineptly collecting gerunds without a single care in the world.

Might it have been on one of those kooky journeys that I unwittingly rendezvoused with ThePalette add-in, a picker/dropper with zoom, user-defined multiple palettes, automatic parsing/replacement/insertion into code, and support for RGB, HSV, HLS, CMYK macros as well as HTML and plain (hexa)decimal color formats?

Absolutely.

Installation

1. Download the add-in binaries and unzip the file.
2. Copy the file 'thepalette.dll' to the folder '{VisualStudio}\Common\MSDev98\AddIns'.
3. Close all files, projects and workspaces!!!!!! else ThePalette won't work. You've been warned, bold letters and all.
4. Navigate to the menu Tools/Customize... and click on the tab 'Add-ins and Macro Files'.
5. If there is no entry for 'ThePalette Add-in', click on 'Browse' and locate it manually.
6. A toolbar button is available and should be displayed automatically. If not, click on the tab 'Commands', select 'Add-ins' from the 'Category' dropdown, and drag'n'drop ThePalette's icon onto the appropriate toolbar.

How to Use

Once invoked, ThePalette add-in scans the text surrounding the caret and automatically detects boundaries by following the steps below:

1. Tries to identify one of the color macros (RGB, HSV, HLS, or CMYK).
2. If unsuccessful, then tries to identify HTML, hexadecimal or decimal formats.
3. If unsuccessful, then grabs an identifier (useful when replacing variables or defines).

(Note that if a selection has been made by the user, ThePalette skips the scanning and takes the selected text at his/her risk.)

If the chunk of extracted text can be evaluated into a color (i.e., RGB( 123, 0xA0, 255 ) can be evaluated while RGB( rand() % 255, g1, 34 ) cannot), ThePalette inserts the color in the first available white ColorCtrl and, if none is found, in the first (top-left) ColorCtrl in the grid.

While running, ThePalette relies on certain combinations of mouse clicks, CTRL/SHIFT, and ARROW keys, in order to provide quick access to functionality. These combinations suit me but here is the code for you to modify it as it pleases you.

Now, the heart of ThePalette is the 4x5 grid of ColorCtrls. These controls display the colors of the active palette and behave as describe below.

When the zoom is active, the following applies:

The Options dialog should be self-explanatory.

The Palettes dialog facilitates simple management of palettes (add, rename, delete, duplicate). The listbox enumerates the palettes in alphabetical order and hover tooltips serve to remind us of the contents of each. The FillPalette dialog provides a quick way to (re)set a palette (clicking on the preview shows the original palette).

Differences between the Add-in and the Standalone

Aside from the obvious difference, namely integration with Visual Studio, there is little difference between both versions.

The add-in creates two settings files. The first of these contains the information particular to a given project and is located in each workspace directory that has used ThePalette (the filename takes the form of '{Workspace}.tpl'). The second file contains shared settings (i.e. dialogs' positions) and is located in '{VisualStudio}\Common\MSDev98\Bin\ThePalette.ini'.

The standalone creates a single settings file ('ThePalette.ini') in the directory where ThePalette resides. The standalone also provides the option to inspect the clipboard on startup (the default behavior) and when minimized, it is sent to the SystemTray.

The Source Code

Because ThePalette is a small project, I decided to code it from scratch which, I'm afraid, means that the classes that make up the project are not as clean, tested, portable, documented, general, and fruity-flavored as they could or should be.

Nonetheless, there may be something of interest for you guys. A quick description of some of the classes follows:

Warning on the Color Conversions to/from HSV, HLS, and CMYK

I have not been able to find algorithms that convert to/from HSV, HLS and CMYK accurately (although the error may well be in my implementation).

ThePalette works with COLORREFs internally and this requires a double conversion from the values found in your code to COLORREF and then from COLORREF to one of these formats. Therefore, ThePalette will report values that do not match those found in your code.

(Of course, if a color is manufactured - chosen, picked - with ThePalette, only one conversion is needed and what's shown will be inserted.)

Despite this problem, I have decided to include these formats because those of you that use them may still find ThePalette useful and may be able to let me know how to implement better algorithms. In the mean time, you know what to expect.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my gratitude goes to Alex Vallat for his ColourPicker, for that bit of help that made all the difference (mouse_event), and for the unintentional challenge that eventually got me to write ThePalette.

Credit is also due to, at least, the following:

• The code to capture the desktop was adapted from PJ Arends's Colour preview and picker applet.
• The code to interact with selected text in Visual Studio was adapted from Sergey Pimanov's Visual Studio Add-RGB Macro Creator. Parsing and evaluation was my doing, blame no one but me for it.
• The code for CMYK conversions was adapted from Hans Dietrich's XCmyk - CMYK to RGB Calculator with source code.
• The code for HSV conversions was adapted from Rajiv Ramachandran's A sophisticated color picker control.
• The code for HLS conversions was adapted from Microsoft's article #29240 How To Convert[ing] Colors Between RGB and HLS (HBS).

Other praiseworthy mentions must include:

• Dan Moulding's Visual Leak Detector which I used to check for memory shenanigans. A very, very useful tool.
• An unrelated objective of this endeavor was to test out Whole Tomato's Visual Assist X of which I've heard a great deal. Well, I installed the trial version and it did make development much easier. Acknowledging this is the least I can do (in return) for the guys at Whole Tomato Software.

History

• 1.0 (12/07/2005)
  • Initial release.