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

Tantek Celik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:

> It is true that in order to deprecate a feature, a replacement should be
> suggested.  For the moment we suggest using rgb (or hsl) colors, until as
> such a time that a better color naming scheme is discussed and developed.

I already consider rgb/hsl a better alternative than a naming scheme as weak
as X11's! Some of the suggestions for naming schemes made here are
interesting, but for now at least I would prefer no new naming scheme at
all to X11COLORS.

In my view the named colours are used for two purposes:

  1) to provide a more readable version of certain very often-used colours
     such as black and white, red, blue, a couple of greys, etc.
  2) to allow authors to quickly write a colour where the exact shade does not
     matter, in particular for testing purposes.

IMO the 16 named colours already available are sufficient for the second
purpose, and the extra colours available in the X11 set do not help the first
purpose as they are neither very commonly-used shades nor, for the
most part, very readable, thanks to their poor naming.

--
Andrew Clover
mailto:and@doxdesk.com
http://and.doxdesk.com/

Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2002 06:40:28 UTC