On a workstation or PC you can customize colors used in EPIC.
Areas in the EPIC window (for example, the push button panel or the history area) are assigned colors when the EPIC window opens, and these colors cannot be modified after an EPIC session begins. On a workstation, you can customize the window area colors that appear. On a PC, the default colors cannot be modified.
Layers of objects in the editing area (for example, components, long lines or selected objects) are assigned colors when the EPIC window opens. On a workstation or a PC, you can customize the layer colors that appear when you first open the EPIC window, and you can modify these colors at any time during an EPIC session.
The following sections describe customizing window area colors and object colors.
On a workstation, the colors for the areas within the EPIC window (for example, the push button panel or the history area) are set by the Epic file in the /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults directory. The location of this directory can vary from system to system and what version of XII you are using. Default entries in the Epic file are.
epic*geometry:+0+0
epic*editwin*background: black
epic*lbegraphwin*background: black
epic*background: white
epic*foreground: black
epic*menubarwin*background: gold
epic*cmdwin*background: gold
epic*cmdwin*foreground: black
epic*textwin*background: white
epic*buttonwin*background: light blue
epic*locwin*background: black
epic*listwin*background: white
where:
epic*geometry +0+0 means that the upper left corner of the EPIC window will be positioned in the upper left corner of the screen.
epic*editwin*background is the background color for the EPIC editing area.
epic*background is the background color for the EPIC window, excluding the EPIC editing area.
epic*menubarwin*background is the background color for the menu bar.
epic*textwin*background is the background color for the EPIC history area.
epic*buttonwin*background is the background color behind the push button panel.epic*locwin*background is the background color for the EPIC locator area.
If only one user will run EPIC, any changes can be made directly in the Epic file, but if there are multiple EPIC users on the system you may want to copy the app-defaults/Epic file to your home directory. In this file, you can change any colors, using the format described above. These changes will override the app-defaults/Epic file. You can, as an option, also list any color changes in your .Xdefaults file. Any changes made in your .Xdefaults file will override both the Epic file in your home directory and the app-defaults/Epic file.
The area colors can be chosen from the full palette supported by the X Window System. See your X Window System documentation for the available colors.
For a PC, default colors for the areas within the EPIC window are.
| Area | Color |
|---|---|
| Background for the editing area | Black |
| Background for the EPIC window, excluding the editing area | White |
| Background for the menu bar | White |
| Background for the history area | Black |
| Background for push button panel | White |
| Background for the locator area | Black |
On a PC, default colors for EPIC window areas cannot be changed by the user.
On a workstation or a PC, you can control the colors of layers of objects (for example, sites, components, switchboxes) in the editing area. You can customize the colors assigned when the EPIC window opens, and change these colors during your EPIC session.
When the EPIC window opens, the system assigns default colors to object layers. To change these default colors, you can edit your epic.ini file (described in the section titled “Initialization Commands”). Using a text editor, you can open your epic.ini file and enter this command for each layer color you want to modify.
setattr layer layername color color
where:
layername is the name of a specific layer. The layername varies depending upon the architecture. Examples of layernames are sites, components, switch boxes, pinwires, local lines, long lines, pips, routes, ratsnests, hilite, select, and text.
color is the color that you want to assign to the specified layer. The color can be black, blue, green, cyan, red, magenta, yellow, white, grey, dark blue, dark green, dark cyan, dark red, dark magenta, or olive.
If you want to change the colors for more than one layer, each layer requires a separate setattr line in the epic.ini file.
At any time during an EPIC session, you can change the color assigned to a specified layer by entering a setattr command in the EPIC Command Line dialog box, using the same syntax described above. You can also modify a layer color by using a Layer Attributes dialog box. The dialog box procedure is described in the section titled Viewing and Changing Attributes in the chapter titled Using EPIC. When you change layer colors after the EPIC session begins, the changed colors are only valid for the current EPIC session.
