COL Format
Intel byte order

Information from File Format List 2.0 by Max Maischein.

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If you notice any mistakes or omissions, please let me know!  It is only
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This file has been authored in the style of the INTERxxy.* file list
by Ralf Brown, and uses almost the same format.

Please read the file FILEFMTS.1ST before asking me any questions. You may find
that they have already been addressed.

         Max Maischein

Max Maischein, 2:244/1106.17
Max_Maischein@spam.fido.de
corion@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de
Corion on #coders@IRC
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DISCLAIMER:  THIS MATERIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS".  I verify the information
contained in this list to the best of my ability, but I cannot be held
responsible for any problems caused by use or misuse of the information,
especially for those file formats foreign to the PC, like AMIGA or SUN file
formats. If an information it is marked "guesswork" or undocumented, you
should check it carefully to make sure your program will not break with
an unexpected value (and please let me know whether or not it works
the same way).

Information marked with "???" is known to be incomplete or guesswork.

Some file formats were not released by their creators, others are regarded
as proprietary, which means that if your programs deal with them, you might
be looking for trouble. I don't care about this.
--------------------------------------------

A COL file stores the rgb values for entries in the color palette. Both
Animator Pro and the original Animator produce COL files, but the formats
are different. To process a COL file for input, check the file size. If it is
exactly 768 bytes, the file is an original Animator COL file. If the file is
any other size, it is an Animator Pro COL file - which makes identification
almost impossible.

Animator Pro COL Files do have a 8-byte header :

OFFSET              Count TYPE   Description
0000h                   1 dword  File size, including this header
0004h                   1 word   ID=0B123h
0006h                   1 word   Version, currently 0

Following the file header are palette entries in rgbrgb... order. Each of
the r, g, and b components is a single byte in the range of 0-255. Generally,
there will be data for 256 palette entries, but this cannot be assumed.
The actual number of palette entries is ((size-8)/3); if this value is not
an even multiple of three, the file is corrupted.

Original Animator COL Files

A COL file created by the original Animator is exactly 768 bytes
long. There is no file header or other control information in
the file.

EXTENSION:COL
OCCURENCES:PC
PROGRAMS:Autodesk Animator, Autodesk Animator Pro
SEE ALSO:FLIc,FLT
