ColourChooser - Perl/Tk module providing a Colour selection dialogue box. use Tk::ColourChooser ; my $col_dialog = $Window->ColourChooser ; my $colour = $col_dialog->Show ; if( $colour ) { # They pressed OK and the colour chosen is in $colour - could be # transparent which is 'None' unless -transparent is set. } else { # They cancelled. } # May optionally have the colour initialised. my $col_dialog = $Window->ColourChooser( -colour => 'green' ) ; my $col_dialog = $Window->ColourChooser( -colour => '#0A057C' ) ; # The title may also be overridden; and we can insist that only hex values # are returned rather than colour names. We can disallow transparent. my $col_dialog = $Window->ColourChooser( -language => 'en', # Or 'de' or 'fr'. -title => 'Select a colour', -colour => '0A057C', -transparent => 0, -hexonly => 1, -showhex => 1, ) ; ColourChooser is a dialogue box which allows the user to pick a colour from the list in rgb.txt (supplied with X Windows), or to create a colour by setting RGB (red, green, blue) values with slider controls. You can scroll through all the named colours by using the <Down> and <Up> arrow keys on the keyboard or by clicking the mouse on the scrollbar and then clicking the colour list.

Options
The user has three options:

OK
Pressing OK will return the selected colour, as a name if it has one or as an RGB value if it doesn't. (Colours which do not have names are listed as 'Unnamed' in the colour list box.) If the "-hexonly" option has been specified the colour is always returned as a Tk colour hex value, i.e. in the form '#HHHHHH' except if Transparent is chosen in which case 'None' is returned. OK is pressed by a mouse click or <Return> or <o> or <Control-o> or <Alt-o>.

Transparent
Pressing Transparent will return the string 'None' which is xpm's name for transparent. Transparent is pressed by a mouse click or <t> or <Control-t> or <Alt-t>.

Cancel
Pressing Cancel will return an empty string. Cancel is pressed by a mouse click or <Escape> or <c> or <Control-c> or <Alt-c>. (Note that if the language is not english then the letter to press will be the first letter of the translation of the word 'Cancel'. ColourChooser.pm should be placed in any Tk directory in any lib directory in Perl's %INC path, for example, '/usr/lib/perl5/Tk'. ColourChooser looks for the file rgb.txt on your system - if it can't find it you will only be able to specify colours by RGB value. Does almost no error checking. Can be slow to load because rgb.txt is large; however we now load a single instance of the colour names when the module is first used and these names are then shared. If you scroll the list by keyboard or use the mouse to move the colour sliders the colour updates as you go; but if you use the mouse on the scrollbar you must click the colour name box for the colour to update. I don't know why this is and any advice on how to fix it would be welcome. Mark Summerfield. I can be contacted as <summer@perlpress.com> - please include the word 'colourchooser' in the subject line. The code draws from Stephen O. Lidie's work. Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1999-2000. All Rights Reserved. This module may be used/distributed/modified under the LGPL.