color look ups

I've been writing some scripts (r.show and v.show) that highlight
categories on the monitor. Essentially it makes reclasses on the
fly and then d.rast -o or d.vect. v.show allows for a user specified
color, which is easy given the d.vect command line. I would like
to do the same for r.show by writing to the colr/ directory. Is
there a GRASS routine I could tap into to do this for me or to
at least translate the standard color names to RGB?

sue huse
REGIS
U Calif Berkeley