On Jun 1, 2005, at 8:05 AM, Christopher B. Wright wrote:
I have *always* seen the term "palette" used to describe the *mechanism* that allows you to choose which color to use (i.e., click on this box on the color palette). The term swatch has been used with fabric (little scraps of fabric that you can use to compare colors) and paints (pieces of paper with the color of the paint on it so you can compare paint colors) but I've never seen it used in computer programs.
A lot probably depends on which programs you've had experience with.
Have you only worked with 'paint' programs and not with vector 'drawing' programs? And with more than just the base ones?
When looking over terms, we surveyed many different programs and also many different graphics professionals. One thing I recall is that depending on where someone worked, and with which tools, they used some different terms for things. And also that 'palette' was more common with Photoshop 'bitmap-heads', but not with others.
For example, in Adobe Illustrator "palette" refers not to "a set of colors you can play with" but instead to the different control windows/panels it uses. It has a "Color palette" but that really means the "Color control-panel-widget-thingie". It also has a "Swatches palette" (which is what you're thinking of as a "palette" in general). It also has a "Graphics Styles palette", "Stroke palette", etc.
Many other programs also use different terms.
Which doesn't bother me in the least, but I did want to point that out. If you're going for consistency with Gimp and all that, renaming similar tools probably won't work in your favor...
Actually, we're not really going for consistency with Gimp. Instead, we're trying to be the best SVG editor we can. If that aligns with others, good, but if that means we take some things in a different direction then being better takes precedence over being consistent with existing apps.
Also... in general since we're an SVG drawing application, we tend to follow other drawing apps (Illustrator, Freehand, Xara, etc) instead of paint apps (Photoshop, Gimp, etc) when differences arise.