Re: Your help needed to make the Web more usable

Liam Quinn wrote on comp.human-factors:

> In article <Og7NvU0#8GA.78@rpc1284.daytonoh.ncr.com>,
>   fredie.layberger@columbiasc.ncr.com (Fredie J. Layberger) wrote:
> >
> > I would also like to see a more human way of assigning colors, but I'm
> > not sure that HSL is much better.

It isn't. It has some widely-recognised human-factors limitations; it adds
nothing that sRGB does not already have,  and is grossly inferior to any
visual selection method (Pantone colors, Toyo, TrueMatch, visual color
pickers, direct measurement) all of which can be correctly and unambiguously
converted into sRGB and the resulting color specifcation written into the CSS

stylesheet.

> I wouldn't mind the existing RGB
> > method if it used base 10 instead of HEX numbers.
>
> This is allowed in CSS1.  See <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#color-units>.

Thanks Liam, not only for the specific reference but also for the implicit
pointer to theCSS1 spec; CSS2 uses the same color appearance model. I would
invite those readers
of c.hf who are interested in color to read the description of the sRGB color
space,
used by CSS at:

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB

Please note that this is *not* the same as "device RGB". Please also note
that this is
a color appearance specification (ie it includes surround, flare, ambient
whitepoint and
other viewing parameters) and that it is defined in terms of an
industry-standard
International Color Consortium profile; ICC profiles are the basis of the
color
management system currently built into MacOS, Solaris and SGI Irix and which
will be
built into Windows98. sRGB is currently being progressed through the
ITU working
group on multimedia as an international color specification.

If after considering the above materials, anyone has a substantive suggestion
to make
for improvement, please *first subscribe* to the mailing list
www-style@w3.org
(see http://www.w3.org/Mail/Request) and then argue your case.

Write-only postings, particularly two-liners that say little more than "me
too", are starting
to annoy the subscribers of that list. There is no vote in progress. Thank
you for your
consideration.

--
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Thursday, 4 December 1997 12:30:56 UTC