Output a spreadsheet to act as a reference for various color symbols that can be used in formatting cells with the ruby spreadsheet GEM.

color_ref_spreadsheet.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'bundler/setup'

Bundler.require

def mark_column_color(sheet, row, col)
  symbol_name = sheet[row,col].slice(1..100)
  color = :white
  color = :black if (col == 1 && [1,2,9].include?(row)) || (col == 2 && [5,7,9].include?(row) || (col == 3 && [1,2,5,6,7,9,10,11].include?(row)))
  color_column_fmt = Spreadsheet::Format.new :pattern => 1, :pattern_fg_color => symbol_name.to_sym, :vertical_align => :middle, :size => 14, :align => :center, :color => color
  sheet.row(row).set_format(col, color_column_fmt)
end

book = Spreadsheet::Workbook.new
header_format = Spreadsheet::Format.new :vertical_align => :middle, :size => 16, :color => :green, :weight => :bold, :align => :center
sheet = book.create_worksheet :name => 'Colors'

columns = (0..3).to_a
row = 0
sheet.row(row).concat ['Symbol', 'Symbol', 'Symbol', 'Symbol']
sheet.row(row).default_format = header_format

row = 1
color_offset = 0
while row <= 14
  color_row = []
  columns.each{|col| color_row << ":xls_color_#{color_offset + col}"}
  sheet.row(row).concat color_row
  columns.each {|col| mark_column_color(sheet, row, col)}
  sheet.row(row).height = 30
  color_offset = color_offset + columns.size
  row = row + 1
end
columns.each{|col| sheet.column(col).width = 25 }


book.write 'colors.xls'

To use. Create a Gemfile that contains:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'spreadsheet', '~> 0.9.1'

Then pull the source file above into the same folder as the Gemfile and:

bundle install
bundle exec ruby color_ref_spreadsheet.rb

This will output a colors.xls file that can be used as a reference for the various
color symbols to use with the ruby spreadsheet gem.