Making a container colour with calc

[Charity]

I was given a color

 

5204378

 

I do not know what it is but I was hoping that FM would.  So I made a calculation container and put

 

GetAsText ( 5204378 ) and many things and even GetAsCSS() but nothing turns it to the purple it is supposed to be.  I see an RGB() for colour but it wants the numbers split apart and I do not know how.  What am I missing please?

[Charity]

I should add that this colour came from one of our company artists and it is our logo colour and they want a colour block for a background that I can control with script or calculation.  But they may want more colours so I might use repetitions if I can get this to work.  

[Lee Smith]

Is it a dark purple?

 

This tool may be of help.

 

http://www.colorpicker.com

[comment]

I was given a color

 

5204378

 

I do not know what it is

 

Neither do I. There are a zillion ways to specify a color. Ask them which one they use. What color is it supposed to be, anyway? If it matches what you would get using TextColor ( "some text"  ; 5204378 ) then it might be a Filemaker color - IF your company artist knows how to calculate it (which I would seriously doubt).

[IdealData]

This looks like a 'compound' of the original RGB values.

 

Essentially

 

R*256*256 + G*256 + B

 

If you do the reverse maths then you will get

 

R=79

G=105

B=154

 

using the colour picker website mentioned above it looks like a mid-range blue

[comment]

using the colour picker website mentioned above it looks like a mid-range blue

 

 

I believe you have the wrong hex values - it should be #4F699A, which looks like this:

▉

 

 

Doesn't look like "purple" to me, though.

[IdealData]

No, that's the 'blue' I saw (and the correct hex values) - but I couldn't figure out how to do what you did, so I approximated with the coloured text.

 

Nevertheless, I believe my solution is correct.

[Charity]

Thank you, Lee, for the link.  This is great and I will bookmark it but it won't allow a number to be put in.  

 

That is our blue I am pretty sure.  We have three colours in our logo, purple, blue and silver.  They were supposed to send the purple for our banner.  I think they sent the wrong colour.  But our logo is multi-shaded and multiple colours of purple and blue so I don't know the purple they want.  I have emailed the Artist.  

 

So I can be prepared and also just understand, can we figure this together?

 

red * 256² + green * 256 + blue

where 256² = 65536

 

So if I know the result of the above (the single large number), how do I reverse the math?    'the number' / 65536 * 3 isn't right nor anything else I try so far.  Also, when I Google #4F699A, it says it is 'colour hex' .  I cannot even find Hex in FM Help unfortunately but if I knew this hex, this one website then gives me ways of getting the RGB.  I feel like I'm on an easter egg hunt.    

 

​I see what you mean, Comment, about many ways of getting a colour.  BTW, why does this website keep spelling colour wrong?  COLOR.  Isn't it?  Maybe it's just too early for me.  I appreciate the help, guys.  I looked for an emoticon with a dunce hat but could not find one.

Also, in looking again at the email, he says "here is the decimal value".  Does that help?  It didn't have a decimal however...

[comment]

So if I know the result of the above (the single large number), how do I reverse the math? 

 

There's no real need to reverse the math; if that is your color and that is the meaning of their "decimal", you can use the number directly in Filemaker, as I said earlier:

TextColor ( "some text" ; 5204378 )

will return text in the above color. In any case, the reverse math goes like this:

Let ( [
b = Mod ( Decimal ; 256 ) ;
g = Mod ( Div ( Decimal ; 256 ) ; 256 )  ;
r = Mod ( Div ( Decimal ; 256^2 ) ; 256 )
] ;
List ( r ; g ; b )
)

​I see what you mean, Comment, about many ways of getting a colour.

 

Do you?

http://encycolorpedia.com/4f699a#information

 

Note that their "Decimal" is the same as Filemaker's color, so that's encouraging.

[LaRetta]

Great link! 

 

Charity, is your system telling you it is misspelled?  I think that spelling comes from your operating system's regional settings ( language? ).  Have you changed yours recently?

[LaRetta]

Hey Charity, I also just found this cutie http://www.mathsisfun.com/hexadecimal-decimal-colors.html

 

Plugging in your decimal number will produce your colour for easy viewing.  It's a cool tool.  However, you can use Michael's calculation and create your own colour picker now!

[Lee Smith]

Hey LaRetta,

 

Nice resource, definitely a keeper.

[Charity]

I sure appreciate all of this information.  There is much more to colors than I would have ever expected.  I heard back from our artist.  He said he sent the blue for the hue, whatever that is supposed to mean to me I do not know.  But I now have the purple and I can figure it out too thanks to the calculations provided.  I tried the suggestion in post #4 but when it was blue I figured that was not the right formula.

 

Color ... yes.  I was on my mother's laptop.  And I see in looking it up that it is not actually misspelled but mostly used in Latin.  I am still not sure why my mother spells this way but I guess Bakersfield isn't the centre of the universe after all.

 

Mod(Div(  

 

well I read up in help and even made a test and I think I see how Mod works.  I will keep this calculation you created Comment since you listed it so clearly  and thank you all again.  How did people do this job before there were forums so we could help each other?

[comment]

Color ... yes.  I was on my mother's laptop.  And I see in looking it up that it is not actually misspelled but mostly used in Latin.

 

Huh? The UK spelling is "colour", the US spelling is "color". Same as "favour" vs. favor" or "organise" vs. "organize" and many more. So it really depends on your mother being from Bakersfield, California or Bakersfield, Nottingham (assuming she's not from ancient Rome...).

 

 

How did people do this job before there were forums so we could help each other?

 

They went to a library.

[Lee Smith]

FileMaker User Manual

[Charity]

She said her computer misspells often just like you show.  She lives in Bakersfield, CA but it was purchased in Australia.  Not sure where I got Latin from but some link when I looked it up must have mentioned Latin.  UK spells like that?  Funny.

 

I have read the entire FM Help.  I don't post until I try to find answers myself.  But, just as a dictionary where you need to know how something is spelled to find out how it is spelled, one needs to know what to look for before they can find it.  And that is not always easy.   

 

I remember spending a full week looking how to make the tab on the body disappear so I could see text under it in that space.  Whereas if others knew FM besides me, I could ask and you would all know what I meant by describing the little thingy that sticks up.  No book can interpret like that.  But Google sometimes does I swear. 

[webko]

Australia generally spells using the British spellings, although thanks to the ubiquity of Office and Outlook, we're getting more people spelling like Americans....

[comment]

thanks to the ubiquity of Office and Outlook, we're getting more people spelling like Americans....

 

I don't use either, but surely they can be setup to use the locale's spelling?

[Charity]

Oh, the language.  I forgot LaRetta said to check that and I had asked my mom but she told me she would (insert things not too pleasant) if I touched her baby for fear of changing something accidentally on it when I do not know Apple.  I was going to ask for specific instructions in an apple forum but I forgot.

 

I have decided that I must have a macbook also.  I do not want to give it back.

 

How could you not use either color or colour or is my small world mentality showing again?  Of course there are many languages and I read FM exists in several of them but I forget sometimes how much I don't know yet.  yet know.

[comment]

How could you not use either color or colour

 

Not sure what you mean by that. You would use either "color" or "colour" - provided you are using the English language. In Italian you would use "colore", In French "couleur", in German "Farbe", and so on.

 

 

 

I forget sometimes how much I don't know yet.  yet know.

 

Don't worry about it - as time goes on, you will find that you know even less than you thought...

[Charity]

  that made me laugh

 

I am not sure that would be possible but since I will probably forget what I will be forgetting, no stress about it.

 

So in a French version of FileMaker, is it TextCouleurAdd?  I could not even imagine what a Chinese calculation might look like much less how Unicode might behave.  Anyway I am turning 18 tomorrow and for my birthday I requested a full day on this Mac so I can study at home.  While others eat turkey I plan on hiding under the stairwell working on relationships and such.

[comment]

So in a French version of FileMaker, is it TextCouleurAdd?

 

Where did the "Add" part come from? The function (in English) is TextColor, not TextColorAdd. In the French version it would look like this:

CouleurTexte ( Texte ; Rvb ( Rouge ; Vert ; Bleu ) )

But see also:

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5353

 

 

hiding under the stairwell working on relationships

 

See, that's exactly what I would do if I were 18...

[Charity]

I have six brothers and three sisters and I am the youngest.  I hide every chance I get so I have peace.

 

Very interesting about Evaluate().  It seems like a very useful function.  And nope, most my friends are in to games and such and they wouldn't give up time from school on this holiday to study.  But I want to be successful so I do.  I read somewhere that you make a living 9-5 but you build a life in the evenings.  And weekends.  And holidays.  

[Charity]

There's no real need to reverse the math; if that is your color and that is the meaning of their "decimal", you can use the number directly in Filemaker, as I said earlier:

TextColor ( "some text" ; 5204378 )

will return text in the above color. In any case, the reverse math goes like this:

Let ( [
b = Mod ( Decimal ; 256 ) ;
g = Mod ( Div ( Decimal ; 256 ) ; 256 )  ;
r = Mod ( Div ( Decimal ; 256^2 ) ; 256 )
] ;
List ( r ; g ; b )
)

 

Instead of returning text, can I return a resizable rectangle?  People need to select a colour and then that show up throughout the file.  Calculation is out since I do not want to have to attach it to every table occurrence.  And container is out since it seems I must decide the colour then put it in the container.  Not good because I don't want to have to do hundreds of colours.  16 million right?  Conditional format is even more limiting and I cannot change the colours by browse mode (from what I can tell).

 

I want bar I can select colour (whether decimal, RGB, Hex not net decided but hopefully the User would see a colour to click) and they could select the colour they want and the rectangle image throughout the file would change to that colour.  I cannot make container go into a variable either it seems.

 

I wish we had global variable containers that could be set by your calc or RGB.  I think that is what I wish.

I have 3 rates?!  Oh my!  And not even for the few answers that I thought were good!

Oh and I thought of font.  I saw an idea with bars or Gs but I need to be able to resize the rectangle maybe to a square.  I do not yet know where it will be used only that I was told we need it.

If you or anyone knows even a link. I have been searching for few days now.  I find plenty but not what I need unfortunately.

[comment]

Regarding displaying a calculated color swatch - see:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/62067-web-colours/?p=293464#entry293464

 

Another option is to use a web viewer.

 

 

Regarding users selecting a color, I am not sure how that should work, or why. Especially the why. Are they supposed to stylize the solution for themselves, by themselves? That's not a good idea, IMHO.

[Charity]

That is it exactly what I need. EXACTLY 

 

Here is how it started:

 

We want to display where a sales person ranks within their piers but bosses don't want them to see other people's ranking or know who landed where.  So a person can select a colour which will become them and I plan to validate and now with X11 I will probably validate unique on cHex.  So a salesman can look and know where they stand.  I plan to figure how to put the dollar difference between the colours on a chart so they know how much they were short compared to the next salesperson up and how many people it represented by counting the colours.  Owner thought people would like to identify with their colour and maybe something could be purchased in their colour or given as gift even.  Our owner would even let us paint if we wanted.  He is very progressive.

 

This was my idea to rank by colour and they really like it.  As long as they don't tell others their colour then it should work.  I realised after I posted that I wasn't about to produce 16 million color records so I think I just need to come up with the maximum we would need.  We could select the ones we think are different enough from X11 and users can choose.  And I suppose we should skip white and black.   If you still think it is bad idea, I am listening carefully.

 

This is where it ended:

 

Oh cool idea, they say.  So now they want their colour as a ribbon so they can easily see who is checked in or know to login again.  I could even put it on the body and put the fields on top if they want.  We all use everyone else's computers and colour would help us glance across the room and see that we are that box over there.  So I wanted something I could resize trying to be prepared for whatever they want next and wherever they want it. Each person can select only one colour.  I thought that seemed pretty simple until I tried to do it.  

 

Give me three 3 points and I think I can do anything.  I will also look at web viewer.  I have done very little, okay nothing, with it yet.  Thank you for your input.

[comment]

We want to display where a sales person ranks within their piers but bosses don't want them to see other people's ranking or know who landed where.  So a person can select a colour which will become them

That may not be such a bad idea, although I do see two problems:

Most people don't have a good memory for exact shades of colors. Even here on the forum, where the text color palette is severely limited, you might be hard-pressed to pick your own exact shade of red or green:

▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉

▉▉▉▉▉▉▉

▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉

▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉

▉▉▉▉▉▉

 

The other thing, of course, is that if your generous owner wants each one to buy a cup or a scarf of their own color (not to mention tagging your screen with it), then where's the secrecy?

 

I didn't understand the second part of your post.

[Charity]

I never thought of that. 

 

Second part was more of the first.  I will talk to them.  Maybe just put it on their screen and only their colour is coloured and the rest of the people are all grey.  I just thought of using avatars but still, others will see and learn them.  16 people walk up and down multiple parts counters and enter into the closest screen by the part they pulled, you see?  With their current program, they don't track who enters at all so they do not care but I want to track it and I have that working but only if they are the one logged in.  In tests, they say religion takes too long.

 

Memorizing 1200 parts was easier than this stuff but no nearly as fun.  Drat on the colours.  But still I can use this even if we don't use it for their ranks.  Maybe a chart of some sort.

 

"if your generous owner wants each one to buy a cup or a scarf of their own color (not to mention tagging your screen with it), then where's the secrecy?"

 

That was so very funny.  I will tell them in the staff meeting on Monday using these exact words.    

[Charity]

not 'religion' but relogin.  And I realise I mixed purposes.  Display rank in sales, show someone they are still logged in at another screen, and to make their screens more personalised.  Too many needs and too little brain power.

 

How about giving them a secret number and have the number appear in a rank list?  I will get to work on that.

Good colour example also.  I knew there were potential issues but you are right.  Red would look red to someone even if not their red.  It might work with 16 parts workers but sales includes Sales Department also so it would be up to 45 colours and if they want the region to use, it would go up to 120.  

[HALBURN]

The hexadecimal color #4f699a has RGB values of R:79, G:105, B:154 and CMYK values of C:0.49, M:0.32, Y:0, K:0.4. Its decimal value is 5204378.

http://www.colorhexa.com/4f699a

 

This is one of the best color apps for Mac,Windows and iOS: http://www.colorschemer.com/

The app ties into this excellent community based color resource: http://www.colourlovers.com/

[Charity]

Thank you Halburn, these links will come in handy!

 

Hi Comment, I have failed at making a web viewer work with color blocks.  I could not even figure out how to start.  All I can come up with is manually coloring a rectangle and putting it in a container.  I can't seem to take the webbing g's and even if I make the font very large, resizing the block messes it up.  I would love to understand the web viewer idea or any other way I can take a color decimal or hex value and make a resizable rectangle from it.  Conditional formatting seems to work but I can't specify the color, or can I?  I do not mind if they are calculation containers as long as I can specify their color by a field value.

 

If you can just give me a nudge on ideas I'll do the rest.  Thank you very much for all your assistance.

Oh I mean to say that 48 people laughed at your comment.  Oh funny.  Comment was appreciated for his comment.  

 

They want me to come up with some other clever way to display rank and they want staff to choose their colors.  I tried to talk them into colored fonts but they want backgrounds.  I wanted to ask them if they wanted to just build the program instead but I chickened out.

[eos]

I have failed at making a web viewer work with color blocks.  I could not even figure out how to start

 

A very simple example with the basic structure in place; all you need is to plug in the desired values (which are here calculated from a number field, since this served to demo something else) – and become a bit familiar with HTML.

ColorBlocksInHTML_eos.fmp12.zip

[comment]

I can't seem to take the webbing g's and even if I make the font very large, resizing the block messes it up.

 

What is the largest size of the swatch you need to get to?

 

 

 

they want staff to choose their colors.  I tried to talk them into colored fonts but they want backgrounds.

 

See, that's exactly the bad idea I talked about in post #25 above. Give people a chance to design their own environment and they will come up with the most hideous colors you can think of. It will make them sick and they won't even know why. Tell your generous* owner to spend his money on a good graphic designer.

 

 

---

(*) Actually, he doesn't need to be generous for that. These things pay for themselves in staff productivity.

Edited December 11, 2013 by comment

[Charity]

I do not know the max size we will need. I think the size of layout which is 1024 x 640. 

 

And now they want to choose the font.  Point made, Mr. Comment.  I feel deflated on designing at all.  Next thing I know they will be telling me my lines are too thick or something.  I can't look at the file the same way as before.  And I just received an email from my superior and they were told there is good possibility of layoff.  Only the lowest people in the company of course which is - me.  I am lowest of low and so far at the bottom nobody even comes second.  And I just spent my savings buying FMS for them too.

 

Oh well.  I could have instead paid a fortune for advanced training in software design to teach me not to let users know anything that I am doing.  I could have paid a financial planner to tell me never to invest into software for a company which could afford it just because I wanted to impress.

 

I got off cheap on these lessons.  

Oh and Mr. Eos thank you very much.  Even if I do not use it for this business, I may continue doing this kind of work and if so I will need to know techniques such as this.

Comment, I think I could get by with smaller block of colour.  Maybe 300 x 500 max.  I can not imagine the full layout a colour particularly a hideous one.

I will not go down without a fight.

[Lee Smith]

Hi Charity,

 

You might find this post of comments informational. Does anyone takes us seriously?