The palette editor is invoked by clicking the "Edit" button on the main control panel (next to the current palette display). The palette viewer looks like this:
The palette viewer shows all 256 colours of the current working palette group. Some of these colours may have crosses through them - these are colours (taken from the standard RISC OS palette) that have not been defined by the doll, and are not editable.
Colours without crosses through them are those that have been defined in one of the palette (".kcf") files in the doll. Double clicking one of these colours will open a standard RISC OS colour picker (as that in !Paint). It is not necessary to select "OK" on the colour picker for every colour to be changed - simply selecting a new colour on the palette viewer will update the previously-selected colour from the colour picker.
If the current doll uses an extended palette (ie multiple 256-colour palettes) the palette viewer will show one complete palette at a time. In this case, the drop-down menu button on the toolbar will be unfaded, allowing the user to select which palette is being edited.
Each KiSS palette file may contain up to 10 distinct palettes (palette groups). The group displayed in the palette viewer is that currently active for the doll. Changes to the selected palette group (eg using the image window toolbar, or the Palette menu) will be reflected in the palette viewer immediately.
Even if a particular palette file has only a single palette group defined, it is possible to change colours in other palette groups; the palette file header block will automatically be updated to reflect the extra groups. It should be noted that changing a colour in a palette group that does not exist in the original file will have the effect of changing that colour in all higher-numbered groups: ie if a palette file defines three palette groups (groups 0-2), and a colour in the fourth group (group 3) is changed, the change will be duplicated in all groups after the fourth group (groups 4-9). This is a result of the way colours in missing palette groups are defaulted by the KiSS specification.
NB Changes to palette files are saved at the same time as changes to the CNF file (ie you must click "Save" on the Control Panel to save any changes to the palette).
The New Palette button is used to create new palette files. It will invoke the new palette dialog box, shown below.
The "Filename" field should not include the ".kcf" file extension.
The option buttons allow the use to specify whether the file created should be KISS/GS2 compatible, or be limited to KISS/GS1; and for KISS/GS2 palettes, whether the colour palette is built using 12 or 24 bpp.
The "Colours" field is used to define the number of colours in the palette; and it will be impossible to select a number of colours that will take the total number of colours used in the doll to greater than 256. If a number other than 16 or 256 is chosen, MakeKISS will raise an error warning that some KiSS players will not accept such a palette file (in addition, there are no pixel-editing packages available on RISC OS that can handle, say, 32-colour images, so a palette with 32 colours in is not terribly useful anyway).
When a new palette file is created, some colours in the palette viewer will lose their cross - these extra colours may now be edited.
It should be noted that only the first palette defined will actually have the number of colours specified; all others will have one fewer (at least as far as the palette viewer is concerned). This is because KiSS treats subsequent palettes in a slightly odd way :- Since colour zero means "transparent" palette files after the first have colour zero stripped out, and higher colour numbers shifted one downwards (this is all handled automatically by KiSS viewers, but it is probably the explanation for the many "I can't make multi-palette KiSS dolls work " messages in the various mailing lists, BBSs, etc).
The "File" field in the toolbar indicates which palette file the currently-selected colour resides. If the doll uses multiple 16-colour palettes, they are concatenated into a single 256-colour palette internally, so this field is used for information. In practice, it makes little or no difference to the user.