huey: A color and font selection tool

Abstract

Describes a program to display and modify colors and fonts, using the Python programming language and the Tkinter widget set.

This publication is available in Web form and also as a PDF document. Please forward any comments to tcc-doc@nmt.edu.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Files discussed in this publication

2. Color models

2.1. The HSV model: hue, saturation, and value
2.2. The RGB model: red, green, and blue
2.3. The CMY model: cyan, magenta, and yellow

3. Operation of huey

1. Introduction

The selection of colors and fonts of type is an important part of the design process for graphical user interfaces (GUIs). huey is a program you can use to see how colors and fonts look on your screen.

huey allows you to work with two colors at once:

Type is shown in the text color. The initial text color is black. You might also think of this as the foreground color.
The area behind the type is the background color. The initial background color is bright red.

For those interested in the implementation of this program, see huey: Internal maintenance specification. As an example of Python and Tkinter programming, the entire Python source for the program is presented there using a lightweight literate programming (LLP) style.

1.1. Files discussed in this publication

Here are online links to all the files required by this program (other than Python and Tkinter installs).

huey: The main script.
scrolledlist.py: Source for the ScrolledList compound widget.
fontselect.py: Source for the FontSelect compound widget.
huey.xml: DocBook source for this document.