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Colors XML

Owned by Bram Verniest (Unlicensed)
Apr 22, 2020
2 min read

XML Structure

Fonts are a top-level resource within a document, containing a list of ?Document Object Model - Color items:

<document>
  <colors>
    <item id="123-456-789" name="Yellow_CMYK" type="CMYK" c="0" m="0" y="100" k="0" />
    <item id="5845-59684-5" name="Red_RGB" type="RGB" r="255" g="0" b="0" />
    <item id="6578-9518-9872" name="Custom_Cyan" type="CMYK" c="100" m="0" y="0" k="0" isDocumentColor="false" />
    <item id="357-951-852" name="My_LAB_color" type="LAB" L="100" A="0" B2="0" />
  </colors>
</document>

A distinct difference between colors and other lists is that not all colors in the XML are editable through CHILI editor's "Color List" Panel. There is a distinction between document and custom colors. a "document color" (the default) applies to the entire CHILI document, and behaves as a list of colors which can be managed "centrally". Updating a document color will often influence multiple items within the document. The opposite (isDocumentColor="false") is a custom color, which only applies to a single object. Within CHILI Editor, this can be choosen by choosing "custom" as the color (at which point the color settings can be edited in the same location), rather than choosing a named color. Internally, this will also create a color in the "colors" list, but by setting "isDocumentColor" to false, that specific color won't appear anywhere else in the editor for editing.

When converting an Adobe InDesign document using CHILI's InDesign Extension, this would correspond to colors which do (or not) appear in the Swatch List.

Color items

Colors can come in a variety of types, described by ?Editor Enumerations - ColorType. The other color properties often depend on the selected type (eg: the c, m, y and k apply to colors of type "cmyk").

In this way, cmyk, rgb and lab properties are available.

NOTE: for lab colors, there are two minor inconsistencies (both explained by the overlap with the "b" part of an rgb color):

  • The property names (and therefore also the case-sensitive XML attribute names) are uppercase
  • The "B" part of LAB has a property name of "B2"

Referencing Colors

In most cases, colors are simply referred to as a normal list item (by putting its ID in the relevant property/attribute). For a textflow or text format it works slightly different, though: ?TextFlow and ITextLayoutFormat XML

Default Content

The basic/system None, White and Black colors will always be added by CHILI editor if they don't exist inside the XML

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