I've collected a wide range of information about Decker's approach to colors and 1-bit patterns, working with palettes, and importing images, (along with a handy module named "col") in a new example deck:
http://beyondloom.com/decker/color.html
Did you learn anything you didn't previously know? Are any examples unclear? Are there related topics you feel I omitted? I'd love to hear what you folks have to say about it!
There isn't really an observable difference in the behavior of patterns 1 and 47 apart from the fact that 1 is "a texture" which can be inverted and 47 is a "a color" which cannot. I suppose it's sort of a puzzling appendix from a certain point of view. Pattern 47 cannot be selected to draw with manually in either color or 1-bit mode; the "white" swatch on the toolbars normally selects pattern 0, but in "Transparency Mask" mode the same swatch is pattern 32, while erasing or right-click fills still produce pattern 0.
It is entirely possible to use multiple solid colors in animation sequences. I demonstrate this in the demo clip of the AnimEdit contraption; I'll add a brief note to make this clearer.
I remember when I was writing the crossfade function in palettefade I was kind of trial-and-erroring it a bit in terms of seeing if white and black would come out as 0 and 1 or 32 and 47, since I was having to do pixel by pixel stuff when comparing the two images - worked fine in the end though. Good to know the internal logic!
