Craig Bradney wrote:
Looking at just the CxF sample I think its pretty huge for what in the end turns out to be a basic need which isnt too big in the end.
Actually, there's a lot hiding in there that you really do need, and a lot that can just be ignored.
I'll take a pass later on and see what I can digest.
Peter and I discussed it later today a little further. In the end we came to the conclusion that there is no real need to store anything other that pure colours
True.
However the big "gotcha" is 'what is a color?'
whether that be in RGB or CMYK (or perhaps HSV?). The idea is to share colours, not the use of them. That is, so we can share a colour set so when a file is loaded, the same colour set is accessible in Inkscape and Scribus etc.
Exactly.
And that's where at the very least we're going to need some 'colorspace' to go along with numeric values.
RGB in SVG is pretty simple since it uses sRGB by definition. That is, you have numerical components and an explicit colorspace that those are in. Therefore we have the ability (in theory) of having the same "color".
CMYK, on the other hand, is a horrrrrrrrrrible problem. In and of itself, there is no "CMYK colorspace".
The named SVG colour chart stores the colours in RGB values only - it does not have/need anymore information.
Actually, it does need more information. The specification of the colorspace those numbers are in.
And SVG has that.
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/color.html
12.1 Introduction All SVG colors are specified in the sRGB color space (see [SRGB] http://www.iec.ch/nr1899.htm)...
For our purposes, especially in Scribus, users WILL want to be able to define CMYK colour sets. If we don't, they WILL ask how to do it so in this case its better to get it done correctly from stage 1.
Ahhh... good pinpointing of needs.
So... a CMYK colorset would also need to specify which CMYK colorspace it is. Bascially one per device. :-)
Good news is that LittleCMS probably has all that is needed for the workflow. The color palette format would just need to include which colorspace it is such that LittleCMS would be able to go in and out of RGB properly.