CharPad 2.3 User Manual - Subchrist Software, 2019.
The Project Palette Form.
The Project Palette form allows you to adjust various project options as well as define
the project's colour scheme and select a current pen.
Pens:-
-Transparent : Background (screen) colour, choose from all 16 colours.
-Char colour : The native colour value used to render a character (or tile). See notes.
-Multi-colour 1 : Only available if multi-colour mode is enabled, choose from all 16 colours.
-Multi-colour 2 : Only available if multi-colour mode is enabled, choose from all 16 colours.
Materials:-
Use the left mouse button to set a material value (hex, 0-f) for the selected character(s).
Char multi-colour mode:-
-Enabled : Any character using a char colour greater than 7 (yellow) will appear in multi-colour (4 colour) format.
-Disabled : Characters can only use the high-resolution (2 colour) format.
Colouring method:-
-Global : All characters are rendered using the same colour (in colour RAM).
-Per Tile : All characters for a particular tile are rendered using the colour assigned to the tile.
-Per Character : Each character is rendered using it's own colour.
Tile system:-
-Enabled : The project can make use of a tile set, the map data refers to tiles.
-Disabled : The project cannot use a tile set, the map data refers to characters.
Notes:-
If character multi-colour mode is enabled, the character set may use up to four colours in any character that uses a char colour greater than 7 (yellow) in the colour palette with the restriction that the character's horizontal resolution is halved and the actual char colour can only be one of the first 8 colours.
If multi-colour mode is disabled, characters can only use two colours, the transparent colour and the char colour which can be any of the possible 16.
On the Commodore 64, colour is not a property of character images, it is a property of the screen
matrix cells in colour RAM and so a character's colour (and multi-colour status) will depend on
the value assigned to the screen position (in colour RAM) the character is displayed in.