Definitions 

Color

A java Color object, which can be created as follows:
int redValue = 34;
int greenValue = 50;
int blueValue = 1;
Color myColor = new Color (redValue, greenValue, blueValue);
Color yourColor = new Color (82, 15, 100);
For other ways to construct Color objects and for methods that may be used on them, consult your reference on java.awt.Color.
Java has a basic set of predefined colors, as follows:  black, blue, cyan, darkGray, gray, green, lightGray, magenta, orange, pink, red, white, and yellow.  When a function call requires a Color type object, one of the predefined colors may be used instead of a user-created Color object.  For example, to supply a magenta Color object, reference it as Color.magenta.
 
 

Date

A java date format based on java.text.SimpleDateFormat.  The available date/time formats are as follows:
 
Symbol Meaning Presentation Example
G era designator Text AD
y year Number 1996
M month in year Text & Number July & 07
d day in month Number 10
h hour in am/pm Number 1-12 12
H hour in day(0-23) Number 0
m minute in hour Number 30
s second in minute Number 55
S millisecond Number 978
E day in week Text Tuesday
D day in year Number 189
F day of week in month Number 2 (2nd Wed in July)
w week in year Number 27
W week in month Number 2
a am/pm marker Text PM
k hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K hour in am/pm(0-11) Number 0
z time zone Text Pacivic
' escape for text Delimiter '
" single quote Literal
 
 

The count of pattern letters determine the format.

Text: 4 or more pattern letters -- use full form, less than 4 -- use short or abbreviated form if one exists.

Number: the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if  the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits.

Text & Number: 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a'..'z'] and ['A'..'Z'] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter will result in a thrown exception during formatting or parsing.

Examples Using the US Locale:
 

Format Pattern Result
"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' hh:mm:ss z" 1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy" Wed, July 10, '96
"h:mm a"  12:08 PM
"hh 'o''''clock' a, zzzz" 12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
"K:mm a, z" 0:00 PM, PST
"yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa" 1996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM
 
 
See Also
WordProcessor Overview