Help > Authoring > Fundamental Tasks > Using Color in Arbortext Editor
  
Using Color in Arbortext Editor
By default, screen displays and printed output appear as black characters on a white background. You can change these colors:
• in specific document types or documents
• to display specified types of text in a different color
• to highlight text by specifying a colored baseline-to-baseline stripe behind text
• to change the background color in a display window
Arbortext Editor supports color settings for background and foreground. Background settings are settings applied to the area behind text; foreground settings are applied to the text itself.
Arbortext Editor lets you specify colors using 20 named colors or RGB specifications. The RGB values that the named colors are mapped can be configured using the set fontcolorxxxx and set backgroundcolorxxxx commands. (Where xxxx is the name of the color being set. For example set fontcolorblue.) In effect, there are 40 named colors because you can configure a color name separately for foreground and for background. You can put them in a startup command file or in an .acl file in the custom directory.
Colors can be specified in stylesheets or in documents themselves. Stylesheet specifications generally apply to all elements of a certain type (perhaps qualified by context and occurrence) within a given document type. For example, a stylesheet for an article document type might specify that titles within sections should be a certain color. Within documents, authors may have permission to specify colors for fonts, (Format > Touchup > Font). Refer to the stylesheet topics beginning with the Stylesheet overview.
You can apply colors from several dialog boxes and screens in Arbortext Editor. You can choose from a 20 color palette showing the 20 named colors as they are configured. The colors available on the foreground color palette are different than those available on the background color (shading) palette.
You can select additional colors by clicking on More colors on either palette. Doing so displays a palette of 216 web-safe colors from which you can choose. From there, you can also select any color from a custom color palette. The web safe and custom color palettes are especially useful in choosing the colors you wish to map the color names to, or in situations where controlled color use is not important.
When you need to carefully control the colors of published documents, using configured named colors has several advantages.
• The colors you configure appear in the color palettes throughout Arbortext Editor so users do not have to open additional dialog boxes to choose the correct color.
• Selecting color names from the color palette of RGB values helps you avoid typing errors.
• If authors only use the colors in the palette, the colors used in documents will coincide with those specified in stylesheets.
• Colors can be easily changed after a stylesheet or document has been authored. For example, suppose that a corporate color is specified to be a certain shade of blue-green. You decide to use teal for that color, put a set backgroundcolorteal="somevalue" command in a startup command file, use teal in your stylesheet for the background color of certain elements, and your authors use teal for table cell shading. If the corporate color is later changed to a different shade of blue-green, you can easily map teal to a different RGB value by changing the startup command file. You won't need to modify the stylesheet, or more importantly, the documents.
* 
The default values for the named colors are picked for editor view appearance. They are not all web safe, and their appearance varies between Windows and UNIX platforms. Publishing applications should reconfigure named colors before publishing with them. Displayed colors may also appear differently on different monitors because of differences in the ways monitors render colors.
Using color in Arbortext Editor
Desired outcome:
For additional information:
Change default text color.
Change display color of addition or deletion tags when comparing document versions.
Compare preferences
Override display color of addition, deletion, and changed attribute tags when comparing document versions.
set diffattrmodcolor command, set diffdelcolor command, set diffinscolor command
Change display color of text and file entities.
Color preferences
Override text and file entity display colors for current session.
set textentityfontcolor command, set fileentityfontcolor command
Change display color of generated text.
Color preferences
Change display color of markup tags.
Color preferences
Override current display color for markup tags.
set tagfontcolor command
Override default color for specified text
Changing the font characteristics
Specify a different text color for text contained in a specific tag.
Highlighting (highlt) font color option
Specify a color for a baseline-to-baseline strip behind text of a given style.
Highlighting (highlt) background color option
Change the background color in a display window from default white.
window_set command canvasbackground option
Change the value of a default color to another background color in the current work session.
set backgroundcoloraqua, set backgroundcolorblack, set backgroundcolorblue, set backgroundcolorbrown, set backgroundcolorgray1, set backgroundcolorgray2, set backgroundcolorgray3, set backgroundcolorgray4, set backgroundcolorgray5, set backgroundcolorgreen, set backgroundcolorlime, set backgroundcolormaroon, set backgroundcolornavy, set backgroundcolorolive, set backgroundcolororange, set backgroundcolorred, set backgroundcolorteal, set backgroundcolorviolet, set backgroundcolorwhite, set backgroundcoloryellow
Adjust a font's background shading area in output
APTBGHEIGHTPCT and APTBGDEPTHPCT environment variables
Change the value of a text default color to another color in the current work session.
set fontcoloraqua, set fontcolorblack, set fontcolorblue, set fontcolorbrown, set fontcolorgray1, set fontcolorgray2, set fontcolorgray3, set fontcolorgray4, set fontcolorgray5, set fontcolorgreen, set fontcolorlime, set fontcolormaroon, set fontcolornavy, set fontcolorolive, set fontcolororange, set fontcolorred, set fontcolorteal, set fontcolorviolet, set fontcolorwhite, set fontcoloryellow
Make spot color separations.
Make text “invisible”.
Highlighting (highlt) foreground percent option