Amulet Widgets

Numbers and GEMstudio

Integers can be entered in hexadecimal or decimal. Decimal examples are used in this document. If hexadecimal is desired, precede the number with 0x. For example:

Amulet:UART.invokeRPC(10)

is equivalent to

Amulet:UART.invokeRPC(0x0A)

Colors and GEMstudio

The color depth used in a project is determined by the Color Depth tab in the Project Properties menu option. The different color bit depth options are: 8 and 32. If using 8-bit color, a palette must be designated. If not designated, the AmuletDefault.pal color palette (found in the Configuration\Palettes directory) will be used. The AmuletDefault.pal color palette is the Web Safe palette with nine extra colors added. These nine extra colors correspond with the HTML standard color names that aren't normally found in the Web Safe palette.

Colors can be entered in one of five different ways.

1. Use one of the 17 HTML standard color names. See Figure 1.
2. Specify the red, green, and blue values in hex using the following convention:#rrggbb, where rr is the 8-bit red value, gg is the 8-bit green value, and bb is the 8-bit blue value. Each value can be a number from 00 to ff (in hex).
3. Specify the red, green, blue, and alpha values in hex using the following convention:#rrggbbaa, where rr is the 8-bit red value, gg is the 8-bit green value, bb is the 8-bit blue value, and aa is the 8-bit alpha (transparency) value. Each value can be a number from 00 to ff (in hex). The level of transparency is set by the alpha channel. The alpha channel is fully transparent with a value of 00 and completely opaque (no transparency) with a value of FF.
4. Specify the red, green, and blue values in decimal using the following convention:rgb(rrr,ggg,bbb), where rrr is the 8-bit red value, ggg is the 8-bit green value, and bbb is the 8-bit blue value. Each value can be a number from 0 to 255 (in decimal).
5. Specify the red, green, blue, and alpha values in decimal using the following convention:rgb(rrr,ggg,bbb,a.aa), where rrr is the 8-bit red value, ggg is the 8-bit green value, bbb is the 8-bit blue value, and a.a is the decimal value of alpha transparency. The color values can be a number from 0 to 255 (in decimal). The alpha value can range from 0.00 to 1.00. 0.00 is fully transparent and 1.00 is fully opaque(no transparency). 0.50 would be half transparency
6. Use an absolute hex number. This number is not converted, so this can be used to specify a specific index number within a color palette. 

Figure 1. HTML color names, along with the #rrggbb convention equivalent.

Control Widgets and Intrinsic values

The intrinsic values for most Control Widgets can be either a BYTE, WORD or STRING. The exceptions to this are the slider widget and the grouped check box widget, which can only have numbers (BYTES or WORDS) for their intrinsic value. If the href function call is BYTE specific, (i.e. Amulet:UART.byte(5).setvalue()), then the range of the intrinsic value should be 0-255(0x00-0xFF). You can alternately specify a BYTE by putting an ASCII character between single quotes (i.e. 'A', which would be the BYTE equivalent of 0x41 or 65 decimal.)

If the intrinsic value can become greater than 255, then you should use WORD specific function calls. If the href function call is WORD specific, (i.e. Amulet:UART.word(5).setvalue()), then the range of the intrinsic value is 0-65535(0x0000-0xFFFF).

Entering Static Strings

If the href function call is STRING specific, (i.e. Amulet:UART.string(5).setvalue()), then the intrinsic value should be specified between double quotes (i.e. "My string"). The maximum length of a string value is 254 characters.

Using Commas and Semi-colons within Strings stored in Function Calls

Since commas and semi-colons are used to distinguish Multiple Function Calls and Sequenced Function Calls, in order to use commas and semi-colons within strings that are used in function calls, you must use the escape character '\' prior to the comma or semi-colon. For example, to set InternalRAM string variable 5 to the string "To use a comma, use the escape character; same for the semi-colon.", the href would look like this:

Amulet:InternalRAM.string(5).setvalue("To use a comma\, use the escape character\; same for the semi-colon.")

If you fail to use the escape character in front of commas and semi-colons, you will get an error when you try to Run or Program the project, although it won't explicitely say that the escape character is missing. Rather you will get an error complaining of a missing link.