is it possible to save a document's color palette?

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weeble

I prepared a scribus document with a number of company specific colors added with "edit colors."  I  need to extract that color palette to be used in a libreoffice impress presentation, but I can find no documentation on how this can be done.

If this is possible, can someone tell me if this is simply not possible, or point me to a howto?

gratitude, as always

GarryP

Welcome to the forum weeble.

I've never seen an "export colours" feature in Scribus. This could be because it can import colours from any other SLA so there's no real need for an export. (Copying colours is more of a "pull" function rather than a "push".) This doesn't mean that one isn't in there somewhere, just that I've never seen one.

Depending on how many colours you've defined it might be much quicker to just create them manually rather than messing around with a script or waiting for a definitive answer. (In any case, I'm sure it would have been quicker than waiting 2 days for this answer. But that's not your problem.)

Also, if your colours are defined in Scribus with CMYK you'll need to get the RGB values to add them to Libre/OpenOffice (unless L/OO have changed in the last year or so - I haven't upgraded for a while so I'm not on a recent version).

P.S. I think the colours on L/OO are defined to the suite rather than individual application/document, so once you've defined them once they should be available throughout the suite in all documents.

weeble

Thanks for the response.  I was expecting that to be true.  While it is possible to simply create new palettes as needed, the task can become unbelievably time consuming, especially since LibreOffice has, by far, the worst system for adding colors of the lot (Scribus, Gimp, ..., not even considering windows apps).

No complaints, though.  I see that hoping Scribus could help overcome LO's weakness was really a step too far.

Cheers to the Scribus devs for an outstanding project, and to you for taking the time to respond.

I will now return to fixing a broken system which failed shortly after my post. 

GarryP

You're welcome, but I'm sorry I can't be of much more help.

I had a look around and found this http://iuveaene.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/change-default-color-palette-in-openoffice/ and this https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14529&p=67956&hilit=import%20colors#p67956 but neither is really useful for what you want.

Have you thought about using something like http://www.colourlovers.com/ ? It lets you create palettes and save them in formats such as AI, SVG, GPL etc. which Scribus can then import. (It also has other functions too, however it's limited to 5 colours per palette, but you can create as many as you want.) You can also import the palettes into anything else that can use the same file types. You could use it as your "root palette location" (if you know what I mean), but obviously there could be legal implications if you're making a palette with colours that are specific to a company. It's just a thought.

Unfortunately L/OO use their own formats at the moment (SOC, which Scribus can import, I think, but have never tried), but if they change you'll be ready for it.

Actually, this has now got me thinking about an open source "palette manager" where you can create palettes which can be exported for use in any other application that wants to use them. I haven't put much thought into it though so I have no idea what problems there'd be but it sounds to me like a good student project. Maybe not so much the programming - colour selectors are built into most APIs nowadays - but more on the research side: CMYK vs. RBG, colour management, commercial colour sets, etc. Maybe there's one out there already?

Anyway, that's another topic altogether. I hope someone else can give you a better answer than I've given.

P.S. Sorry to hear about your broken system; I've had my share of them over the years.