Inside Macintosh: Advanced Color Imaging on the Mac OS /

Chapter 2 - Color Picker Manager

Using the Color Picker Manager

You can use the Color Picker Manager to allow the user to select a color. The functions defined by the Color Picker Manager are divided into one high-level function and several low-level functions:

• The high-level function, PickColor, provides access to almost all of the Color Picker Manager's feature set. For compatibility with the older Color Picker Package, its old high-level function, GetColor, is still supported by the Color Picker Manager. The use of PickColor is described in "Using the Standard Dialog Box for Color Pickers" (page 2-8).
• The low-level functions allow maximum flexibility for your application. The PickColor function presents a modal dialog box, but the low-level functions allow your application to use moveable modal and modeless dialog boxes. These low-level functions are described in "Using Customized Dialog Boxes for Color Pickers" (page 2-12).

Before calling the Color Picker Manager functions, your application should test for the availability of the Color Picker Manager by calling the Gestalt function with the gestaltColorPickerVersion selector.

enum {
   gestaltColorPickerVersion   = 'cpkr' /* returns version of the 
                                    Color Picker Manager */
};

If the Gestalt function returns a value of 00000200, version 2.0 of the Color Picker Manager is available. If the Gestalt function returns a value of 00000100, version 1.0 (that is, the original Color Picker Package) is available.

Besides using the Color Picker Manager to interact with color pickers already available on the user's system, you can use the Component Manager to create your own color picker, as described in "Writing Your Own Color Pickers" (page 2-30). Other applications can then interact with your color picker by using the Color Picker Manager.

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Subtopics

Using the Standard Dialog Box for Color Pickers

Using Customized Dialog Boxes for Color Pickers

Controlling the Help Balloons for a Color Picker's Dialog Box