Fixing the color palette in Windows 7's version of Paint

This is a screenshot of the Windows 7 version of Paint.

Looks like a big change from the older versions, right? It has a few new features, like additional shapes and brush types. However, one thing that has bothered me is the color palette, which, like in the Vista version, has different, non-"pure" colors.



See what I mean? In case you don't, I'll explain: the red in that palette isn't the purest red your computer can display. Instead of RGB(255,0,0), or #FF0000, it's RGB(237,28,36), or #ED1C24. Not that big of a difference in text, but as you can see the difference is much more pronounced in the other colors, such as green. Can't I just have a pure green without having to use the custom color function all the time? Why couldn't Microsoft have made a palette like this instead?



Well, from my other posts you may have noticed that a lack of source code doesn't always stop me from making programs work better. :-) After figuring out where the color palette is stored, I was able to change the palette to the one above.

To download my modified version, click here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ggmaeevgb2ezn7n

Note that if Microsoft asks me to remove this, I will, and I will figure out some other easy way to modify it, like some kind of patching tool.

In case you want to edit the colors yourself, click here to see my notes on the hexadecimal offsets of the color values. If you find them confusing, just post a comment and I'll try my best to explain.

playnotes.c

First post in a while! Anyway, I was playing around with libao, and I ended up creating a simple program that plays a string of notes on the command line. The only limitations I can think of are that all notes need to be the same length and there are no flats or sharps. There is also a clicking noise in between notes, but I kind of like this as it makes it so consecutive identical notes don't just sound like longer single notes.

The syntax is pretty simple. You run the program with a string of notes as the first argument, and an optional note length (in seconds) as the second argument. As for the string of notes, any letters from A to G play their respective notes, and + and - go up and down an octave respectively. Any other characters act as rests, pausing for the same amount of time as one note.

Here's a link to the source code: http://pastebin.com/4Bwr5hiv

Remember; you need libao (http://xiph.org/ao/) to compile this. Once that library is installed, compile it with gcc -o playnotes -lao playnotes.c.