Beginning with version 4.00, MECCA 2000 includes support for using and outputting color names, so customers may obtain "PANTONE Rhodamine Red C" as used by the Pantone Solid Color system, in their PostScript output files. This feature may not be of value to you, if: 1. Your use of MECCA 2000 is always "direct to film" or "direct to plate", whether they are spot or process color jobs; or 2. You work exclusively in process color, and do not share your color chart (fcp01) with others doing spot color work (either on the same machine, or on the local LAN). "Named colors" (colors are known by name, e.g., color name is "185", not "number 185") is meaningful only for spot color jobs. If you belong to the above categories and decide to continue using the traditional "MECCA fcp01" colors, you will experience no change in the way v 4.00 works. The information herein may still be of informative value to you. If however you use a PostScript RIP, or some other "pre-flight" software, that is at least PostScript Level 2 (note: this is not the same as RIP software Version Number) and is "aware" of color names in a named-color system such as the Pantone Solid Colors, you probably want to utilize those features (e.g., RIP-generated colors which should have been "tuned"; or RIP performed choking). In that case you would want to set up MECCA to use named colors. First, some warning: 1. Using "named colors" scheme requires a new fcp01 chart, and you can only use one (either the traditional "MECCA fcp01", or the new named-colors fcp01). So if you set up to use the new scheme, your existing job files will not magically print/output with the new color names. There is no automatic color mapping. If you open an old file in 4.00 using the new named-colors fcp01, MECCA does a reasonable job to match colors (by CMYK), but will likely end up with many "327xx colors". It is your job to to re-assign your colors used in the job file. If you skip that and simply print the old job, those 327xx colors will appear in the PostScript file as they always have been: FCP_327xx colors. This is also true if you wrote your own scripts to invoke typdrv to print jobs done before using v4.00 named-colors fcp01. And, if you use the new fcp01 chart, but compose-and-print old mark-up without having changed all color references in the mark-up, your output colors will more than likely be "all wrong". Updating color assignment also extends to all merged and/or superimposed external files. That is, if job file A calls job file B, both must have been completely "color re-assigned" in order for the output to contain proper color names. 2. Colors 600 through 700 are no longer "simply grays". The Pantone colors, for instance, include a color 645 which is not gray. Thusly, users will need to go through a mental exercise to distinguish "which color is what now". This is certainly true for those who work in process color, but have to share a common fcp01 with co-workers who handle only spot color jobs. 3. If you want to evaluate the new scheme before deciding whether to use it, you MUST choose a machine that does not share support files in the directory /usr/mecca/color, with other systems on your LAN. Also, some support files have been updated for v4.00; hence if you have MECCA workstations on a LAN sharing files, and one of them is v4.00, they all must be running v4.00. For these reasons, v4.00 update does not set up new color scheme by default. Information below are separated into 2 parts: part A for preparation work you must perform as root, and part B on working with the named colors scheme. A. Set up to use "named colors" scheme (things to do as root) 1. New fcp01 chart v4.00 distribution includes a new ASCII file, "pantone.master", in the "/usr/mecca/color" directory. This file, as distributed, is owned by root, and should be guarded with care: it is the basis for generating new "fcp01" to use with MECCA. For this reason, it is a VERY BAD IDEA to set the file owner/permission of "pantone.master" to allow others to modify it at will (for that matter, it's never been a good idea to permit random editing to fcp01 chart itself). You should read/edit "pantone.master", perhaps delete some colors you do not need, add others you deem "missing", and choose a starting number to assign to all the colors in that file (MECCA still internally works with numbers). If you want to use a named-colors system other than Pantone, e.g., Toyo, you can use "pantone.master" as a reference, create your own "toyo.master", with proper color names and the CMYK combinations for that color system. After you're done editing, run the new tool "makefcp01" (located in /usr/bin/amgraf) to generate a "fcp01" file. Assuming you're in the directory "/usr/mecca/color", and /usr/bin/amgraf is in your command path, type in: makefcp01 pantone.master will generate a new FCPCHART1 file. "makefcp01" will detect the presence of a traditional FCPCHART1, and rename it to "fcp01.mecca" before writing out the new one. 2. Color map daemon There is a new daemon distributed as /usr/bin/amgraf/m2kfcpmap. If you are going to use the new fcp01, you'll obtain a huge performance penalty if you don't run that daemon. This daemon reads your fcp01 into memory, then answers on the localhost interface to questions like "number for this color name?", along with other color info. If the daemon isn't running, MECCA software components will each open the fcp01 file and try to find answer itself. To run the daemon: a. Edit /usr/bin/amgraf/mecca_env.tcl, toward the end there are 2 new environmental variables added, but commented out. Uncomment the "set env(fcpmap_port) 6978" line. And verify that TCP port 6978 is not already used. You can do this by using the "netstat" command: # netstat -an | grep 6978 if you don't get anything back (except the prompt), then port 6978 is free to use. If you get something like one of the following: tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1.6978 *.* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *.6978 *.* LISTEN then you must find an unused port, and set it to env(fcpmap_port). Afterward exit text editor and save "mecca_env.tcl" file. b. Edit /usr/local/etc/rc.d/start_adgl.sh, you should see a line: /usr/bin/amgraf/m2kfntmap & add the following line to after the line above: /usr/bin/amgraf/m2kfcpmap & then save and exit editor. This sets up your system to start the "m2kfcpmap" daemon each time when it boots up. c. Now manually start the daemon (just this once): /usr/bin/amgraf/m2kfcpmap & 3. Output color name default suffix When you were checking out "pantone.master" in step 1 above, you probably saw that it marked a "prefix" for all color names in that file ("PANTONE "). Pantone color names are specified such as: PANTONE Rubine Red U PANTONE Process Blue C By making "PANTONE " the common prefix for all color names, each listed color name can be shorter (faster typing for customers, less chance for errors, and less data to send around). The "U" and "C" above are suffixes Pantone created to indicate stock type (Uncoated, Coated, and Matte). Pantone's website article says there is no difference in ink mix for these stock variations, and we think "the particular stock to be printed on", is a print time, not design time, decision. There are two provisions for choosing the color name suffix: a. Set up the new environmental variable "env(M_NCSUFFIX)" in the file /usr/bin/amgraf/mecca_env.tcl, to a suffix that meets most of your printing requirement. Edit /usr/bin/amgraf/mecca_env.tcl, uncomment the line #set env(M_NCSUFFIX) U and set the suffix letter to one of U, C, M. You can also set it to a minus sign ("-") , to mean "no suffix" (i.e., no suffix by default). b. In MECCA Print dialog, when the following conditions are met: * named-color fcp01 chart is in effect; and * drawing has parts a new drop-down will appear to let the user choose a color name suffix to use for printing any Spot Color part in the job. If the user did not select one from the drop-down menu, then the environmental variable M_NCSUFFIX is effective. Otherwise, the user choice overwrites M_NCSUFFIX setting. The drop-down menu is populated from the ASCII file "/usr/mecca/menus/ncsuffix.menu", which you can customize as needed. Customers who developed their own software which call typdrv directly, please read the file "v4.00_typdrv", also in this directory, on how to set the suffix for each job. 4. layer_color01 chart You should set up a new layer_color01 as well. Best way to do this, is to run MECCA 2000 now, and use Layer -> Setup to assign 32 layer colors, save them to a file, then move that file in place to replace your existing layer chart "/usr/mecca/color/layer_color01" -- remember to save your existing one before you replace it. The default layer chart name is the env. var LAYERCHART value, with "01" appended to it; it may not be "/usr/mecca/color/layer_color". Consult your /usr/bin/amgraf/mecca_env.tcl file for what LAYERCHART is set to. B. Using MECCA 2000 v4.00 with named colors 1. Color density and color name When in Spot Color window mode, a user can specify color value in one of two ways: -- as old fashioned value "600--700"; -- as density: 0--100 (percentage) In Process Color window mode (Window -> Process), however, users must specify color names. That is, "Process Magenta" must be spelled out. Setting a color to the value "680", for example, selects the color named "680" in the new named-colors scheme, not 80% gray. In the "pantone.master" file, we included MB600 through MB699 to stand for "MECCA Black 600 through 699" (700 is now "Process Black"). If they were not removed from "pantone.master" when the new fcp01 was made, then "80% gray for process color" will now be called "MB680". A note: the name "MB" is not mandatory, a site can choose a token to represent "process grays" that it likes best, as long as it does not conflict with the color scheme in use. In any window color mode, users can specify a spot color density by using the "%" notation. For example, "20%" can be put in a Color input box in any dialog, regardless the window color mode in effect. 2. Reported color values Spot colors (old fashioned way of calling them 600-700, inclusive), will be reported as percentages. If you set color in spot window mode (e.g., 60%), then switch to process color mode, when you bring up the attributes dialog to set color, you'll see "60%" shown. This is because the various dialogs always show whatever the last color was set to (plus the fact that there's no way to map colors between spot and process color modes). This behavior in the dialogs is also present if you reversed the window modes as just described. 3. Mark-up commands There are 3 mark-up commands that set color(s): CLR, GRS-GRE, and TXT FC/BC sub-commands. They all take color number as argument. None of those has changed syntax or meaning. So using the named-colors fcp01 chart, care must be given to the color numbers a user calls for, especially when the colors are meant to be process colors, since the traditional "600-700" grays now have different names. To help working with color names, new commands have been added: \DENS N^: where N can be 0 through 100 inclusive, and can be a fractional value (e.g. "\dens 20.5^). This is equivalent to using \CLR with values in the 600-700 range. \CLRN name^: where "name" is a color name (e.g. "\clrn Rhodamine Red^"), as listed in the new fcp01 chart (but letter case insensitive match). If using the traditional "MECCA fcp01", each color number is also its name (i.e., color number 185 is also named "185"). In like manner, there are 2 pairs of new graduation commands: \GRSD dens,ang^ ... \GRED dens^ (start and end graduation densities); \GRSN name,ang^ ... \GREN name^ (start and end graduation color names). And for TXT setup, FD= BD= specify foreground/background density percentages; and FCN= BCN= specify foreground/background color names. For the FCN and BCN setup, a color name must be quoted if it contains space(s). For example: FCN="Rhodamine Red" It is not an error to use quotes all the time (e.g. FCN="Orange" works fine, even though the quote marks are not required for that color name).