1) To disable the continuous colorscale at startup, you must set the environment variable AFNI_COLORSCALE_DEFAULT to NO.

2) To setup the startup discrete color pbar, the simplest thing to do is use a 'layout file', which you can include in your .afnirc file. This is somewhat described in the README.environment file under the heading AFNI_LAYOUT_FILE. Also see the contents of README.driver for the full list of the things that can be done in a startup script.

There is no way at this time to define a color palette by name as described in README.setup and then invoke it in the startup script. This is an oversight, but probably not one I will fix anytime soon. Instead, you'd have to use something like

SET_PBAR_ALL A.+3 1.0=yellow 0.5=green 0.2=none

in the startup script. Note that you can generate a startup script from the Datamode->Misc->Save Layout menu item, then edit that file as you see fit.

3) For the adventurous, you can send commands as described in README.driver from another program into AFNI and thus control AFNI remotely. This feature hasn't got much use as yet, but perhaps someday will sweep the world in awe.

bb cx