create a color ramp, which assigns every RGBInt value it's true color

create_RGBInt_colorRamp.r

# i know, this is a really stupid hack, but "necessary" for
# this issue: https://github.com/rstudio/leaflet/issues/212

#' @describe creates a list of RGB values in ascending order,
#'           with the blue channel beeing the least significant,
#'           and the red channel beeing the most significant.
#' @param    bitdepth The bitdepth of the values to create. 
#'           defaults to 8bit, and creates ~16kk values
#' @return   a matrix containing the RGB values as integers.
rgbIntMatrix <- function(bitdepth = 8) {
  
  numOfValues <- 2^bitdepth
  max <- numOfValues - 1
  
  # eg for bitdepth = 1: 00001111
  red <- rep(c(0:max), each = numOfValues)
  red <- rep(red, each = numOfValues)
  
  # eg for bitdepth = 1: 00110011
  green <- rep(c(0:max), each = numOfValues)
  green <- rep(green, numOfValues)
  
  # eg for bitdepth = 1: 01010101
  blue <- rep(c(0:max), numOfValues^2)
  
  matrix(c(red, green, blue), ncol = 3, nrow = numOfValues^3)
}

# create RGB strings with the above function
# resulting object has a size of ~900MB...
palette <- rgb(rgbIntMatrix(8), maxColorValue = 255)