Re: X11 Colors (was Last call comments on CSS3 module: color)

May I offer some thoughts as someone who designs interactive web
services, and knows enough about color to know that he doesn't
understand enough?

I initially got quite excited by suggestions that we might define
colors using expressions such as:

    border: thin dotted light dull shimmering cyan-blue;
    background: light vivid yellow-green;
    color: grimy rich magenta;

but then I thought about how I actually use color.

For the static description of color I'm quite content to use hex RGB
values.
I use a color swatch which gives me the RGB values, and the additional
value of having words to describe a color is mimimal for me, in fact
it is an extra step which I never take.

All th color selection tools I have seen generated RGB values, so no
value there.

What would be useful for me would be the color equivalent of

        font-size: larger;

which would modify a color defined elsewhere (maybe even in a style
sheet I do not have access to).

I'm thinking of something like:

     background-color: lighter;
     border-color: paler;
     color: redder;

where the terms lighter, paler, redder are modifying an existing color
in different (quasi-orthogonal?) ways.

I'm sure that this would need a lot more work to get the color theory
right, then to define the algorithm behind the modifiers so that all
browsers would work in the same way, so is hardly a suitable proposal
for a Last Call modification (unless this work has already been done
somewhere else).

So, as far as the CSS3 color module is concerned, I would be quite
content for it to indicate the demise of named colors, in whatever
standards-lingo is appropriate.

Chris Haynes

Received on Sunday, 2 June 2002 19:31:21 UTC