Many of the plotting utilities allow colors to be specified by name.
For example, graph
supports the `--frame-color' option. The
other graphics programs support the `--pen-color' option, and they
all, including graph
support the `--bg-color' option. The
libplot
library, on which the graphics programs are based,
includes the pencolorname
, fillcolorname
, and
bgcolorname
functions.
In any of these contexts, 665 distinct color names are recognized, including obscure ones like "dark magenta", "forest green", and "olive drab". Color names are case-insensitive, and spaces are ignored. So, for example, "RosyBrown" is equivalent to "rosy brown", and "DarkGoldenrod3" to "dark goldenrod 3".
The file `colors.txt', which is distributed along with the GNU plotting utilities, lists the available color names. On most systems it is installed in `/usr/share/libplot' or `/usr/local/share/libplot'. The color names are essentially those recognized by recent releases of the X Window System, which on most machines are listed in the file `/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt'. However, for every color name containing the string "gray", a version containing "grey" has been included. For example, both "dark slate gray 4" and "dark slate grey 4" are recognized color names.
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