[Solved] Palettes and Smooth colors in OpenOffice

[CanIHasCheeseburger]

Hi,
First off, I've been a long time user of microsoft office. Second, I need to make beautiful documents and share them with my coworkers who are using MS office. Now that I tried OOo, the default colors are bugging me : they're ugly! I know I can design my own colors, this is not what I am asking. I don't want to re create them one by one. What I want is a way to have a set of predefined beautiful smooth colors in OOo.

Is there a way to do this? to import them? or an addon or something? or whatever that could help me to achieve this?

Thanks

[Safway]

Well, OO.o can be configured and customized to your heart's content--if you know coding. That is a major benefit from what you used to use. That is, in fact, what other distributors have done.

Now, can a normal (you and I) chap do what you want? Probably. But when you say "default colors" what do you mean? You are vague and so it is hard for us to help you.

The very best I can do for you is tell you to do a generic Google search for what I think might help you. Here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cu ... h&aq=f&oq=

[acknak]

What I want is a way to have a set of predefined beautiful smooth colors in OOo.

You can load a pre-defined color palette. Unfortunately, OOo does not even make that easy; it's design for color management is very primitive, to say the least.

1. In Writer, use the Drawing toolbar to insert a graphic object, an ellipse, e.g..
2. On the object, right-click > Area > Colors
3. Click the "Load Color List" button (it has only an icon: the standard "open file" icon)
4. Choose any ".soc" file you like
5. OK

This new color list will be the default for Writer; each OOo application can have it's own color list. You can use the same recipe to load color lists for each of the apps.

There are several color lists shipped with OOo (I have: cmyk, gallery, html, palette_en-US, standard, sun-color, web; "standard" is the default list), but none of those have a "smooth" range of colors. The palette that I like that fits your description is named "verlaufend.soc", but I don't remember where I found it. I've attached a copy of it (with color names translated to English) here. Just download it; unzip it, and load it as described above.

If you don't care for that one, try a Google search; I'm sure that's how I found this one, and there are lots more.

There are also utilities that can generate color palette files in different formats. You can use something like that to generate your own palette files.

[CanIHasCheeseburger]

Thank you both!

acknak > this is sort of what I was looking for, this palette is much better then the default one! Thanks!

[symtex]

Here's an HTML color table I found some time ago.....don't remember where.

[sambody]

I've made a color palette (or color list) inspired by the Google sites color palette. I've added an extra green column to match the number of columns in OpenOffice. The result looks like this:

Openoffice Google color palet - preview

openoffice-google-colors2.png (4.05 KiB) Viewed 35143 times

To install (this will REPLACE your standard color palette):
0. download the file google.soc.zip (attached to this post below), unzip it on your desktop for example;
1. In Openoffice Writer, make the Drawing toolbar visible if it isn't already(''View > Toolbars > Drawings'');
2. from that toolbar, choose a drawing tool (Rectangle for example)
3. In the main top menu, go to ''Format > Object > Area'' (this is not accessible if a drawing tool is not active)
4. choose Color
5. Click on the Load or Save icon, find the downloaded palet (google.soc)

If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice

You could adapt the soc file in a text editor to suit your needs.

Hope this helps anyone.

[Hagar Delest]

I like the one provided by acknak but my problem was to have a better 'visibility' of the colors when they are displayed in the color chooser. So here are my 3 proposals, I've kept the 3rd on my system (I thought that that first one would have helped but it doesn't IMHO, then rearranged the 2nd to have a better view again, following the colors order).
First palette is made of 2 blocks, first one for the Saturation variation only, second one for Brightness.
Second palette is made of colors with the pairs of lines Saturation & Brightness.
Third palette is the second one but with colors arranged in a natural color order.

Palettes.png (6.81 KiB) Viewed 36411 times

standard-1.zip

(1.95 KiB) Downloaded 989 times

standard-2.zip

(2.01 KiB) Downloaded 873 times

standard-3.zip

(2.02 KiB) Downloaded 1495 times

[floral]

I've made a color palette (or color list) inspired by the Google sites color palette. I've added an extra green column to match the number of columns in OpenOffice. The result looks like this:

To install (this will REPLACE your standard color palette):
0. download the file google.soc.zip (attached to this post below), unzip it on your desktop for example;
1. In Openoffice Writer, make the Drawing toolbar visible if it isn't already(''View > Toolbars > Drawings'');
2. from that toolbar, choose a drawing tool (Rectangle for example)
3. In the main top menu, go to ''Format > Object > Area'' (this is not accessible if a drawing tool is not active)
4. choose Color
5. Click on the Load or Save icon, find the downloaded palet (google.soc)

If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice

You could adapt the soc file in a text editor to suit your needs.

Hope this helps anyone.

A big thank you for this guide!
BUT it doesn't replace my existing palette forever. When I shutdown the program and open it again the old palette is there again
How can I keep the new palette forever ?
(I am using libreoffice, i don't know if this has anything to do with it...)

[acknak]

Libreoffice uses a different location for its settings profile; look for the standard.soc palette file in
$HOME/.libreoffice/3/user/config/standard.soc

[floral]

Libreoffice uses a different location for its settings profile; look for the standard.soc palette file in
$HOME/.libreoffice/3/user/config/standard.soc

I found that and I replaced it with the one .soc that I wanted, but while the standard.soc is not in the folder, I can see the old template appearing every time I open it.

[floral]

Solved! As sambody says, you have to rename it to standard.soc

[Hagar Delest]

I was fed up with the scrolling of the dialog because of too many colors, so I've reduced it so that all is displayed at once.
Note that the Google style palette is rather nice too (some posts above).

Palette.png (3.73 KiB) Viewed 33079 times

[sukhdev]

Dear Moderator,
May I suggest marking "Brilliant Solutions" to amazing posts such as givenhere. Marking [Solved] is understating the solutions and being over modest. A great help for children and me too would be be arranging colors in VIBGYOR manner. It is easy to remember.

[tays01s]

Does anyone know where to find the place to copy a new 'standard.soc' to for Libre 4.0 on OSX?

[Hagar Delest]

Why should it be different?
Have you made a search for that file?
Have you asked the LO people?

[RoryOF]

On my Ubuntu 12.04 system it lives in /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.4/presets/config

[Hagar Delest]

I think that this is the default used when a new user profile is created. The one to be changed is in the profile I think.

[tays01s]

This is it:

/Users//Library/Application Support/LibreOffice/3/user/config/standard.soc

Change the /3/ to /4/ if using v4.x.

[Hagar Delest]

The new default for AOO 4 will change to 12 columns layout instead of 10, hence wrecking the current palettes.
Use it only with AOO 4. Works also with former versions but layout will not give the sorted effect.

Here is a proposal, with an additional line at bottom with colors standardized for the web.

Palette AOO 4.png (12.26 KiB) Viewed 28998 times

standard.soc.zip

(1.53 KiB) Downloaded 522 times

[jdorenbush]

I created a color palette based on Google Doc's color palette. It's designed to fit the 12 column color palette in LibreOffice 4.2.



I created a Google Doc to gather each of the colors and their respective names -- if anyone is interested in accessing the information I've made the document public.

[acknak]

Nice! Thanks.

[sambody]

There is another very complete color palette on github, made by Federico Kereki, who explained in his article the scripting behind the color palette generation. Here is a direct download link to the palette.

Here's a screenshot of the palette (libreoffice writer 4 on ubuntu):

[acknak]

Nice article--thanks for pointing that out!

I'm not sure I really want a palette with almost 1200 colors, but it could be handy at some point.

Also, the download link doesn't work for me. In fact, I couldn't find any way to simply download the palette file from GitHub. I had to download the whole set of files as a .zip and extract the palette file. I probably missed the big red "download" link

[karlis]

Ok, i spent some time messing around with this thingie... Created two versions of colour palettes. If they come handy to anyone -- feel free to use.
Revised version of Hagar Delest palette above for OOO 4.x 12 column table

standard.soc.extended_KG.zip

(2.44 KiB) Downloaded 392 times

Version 2. Colours stacked vertically. Limited to 12 colours because of that.

standard.soc.vertical_KG.zip

(2.11 KiB) Downloaded 588 times

[djl47]

Version 2. Colours stacked vertically. Limited to 12 colours because of that.

standard.soc.vertical_KG.zip

Thank you so much for creating this. It is much easier to use.

[djl47]

If you're working on Linux, you could also install it like this:
- go to the folder (yourhomedirectory)/.openoffice.org2/user/config/
- rename the file standard.soc to something else (for example to standard-backup.soc)
- copy or move the downloaded file (google.soc) in this folder, rename it to standard.soc
- restart Openoffice

This forum is a goldmine of already solved problems. Thanks again.

[Richarda44]

Ok, i spent some time messing around with this thingie... Created two versions of colour palettes. If they come handy to anyone -- feel free to use.
Revised version of Hagar Delest palette above for OOO 4.x 12 column table
...

I too am thankful for the work people have put in to this feature which I have used for the last year. It does easily everything I want.

Yet I am reticent to raise one question about it. The fourth column (green) and the fifth (red green) to my eye are the wrong way round The red-green looks more like lime - a mixture of yellow and green? Is it my eyes or an uncalibrated monitor I wonder.

Thanks for a great palette and a great forum
Richard

[wakh.ru]

My versions
https://yadi.sk/d/qEQeJpanog83h
standard_1.soc..standard_9.soc - loaded from forums
standard_9_lite.soc - _9 lite mod.
standard_full.soc - _9 extended mod
standard_lite.soc - _9 extended lite mod 1
standard_lite2.soc - _9 extended lite mod 2 - my choice
standard_normal.soc - original