Re: [css3-color] ICC implementation

On Friday 11 July 2008 19:35, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2008, at 5:54 AM, Bert Bos wrote:

> The color-profiles property does not need to be implemented, in my
> view. The spec just needs to specify the assumed color space for all
> untagged content is sRGB. This is already the aimpoint for content on
> the web, so it's not changing anything except putting into a spec
> what is already widely in practice.

That's a concrete suggestion. I'll pass it on. It may well be that we 
have sufficient implementations to support such a statement.

But if we add it somewhere, I think it won't be in the Color module. It 
would be a pity to do another round of drafts when it finally seems so 
close to becoming a Recommendation...

> And then why is this the job of the W3C to create something to fix
> someone else's error? How would a content creator identify that an
> incorrect profile is embedded, and should be ignored? How is that
> easier than simply removing the hypothetic offending profile?

It shouldn't be the job of W3C, indeed, but sometimes there is no help 
for it. We had the same discussion about the image orientation bits in 
EXIF: honor them or ignore them? There are programs that honor them and 
others that ignore them and the result is that images appear on the Web 
that have a rotation set without the user knowing it.

If that is the same for color profiles, the default has to be to ignore 
the profile, because otherwise people surfing with a new browser would 
see broken pages that used to work in their old browser.

But I guess we'll hear from Apple and Mozilla how many bug reports they 
get about pages being broken by their latest browsers. If there aren't 
many or they only mention very few different broken sites, then maybe 
the default *can* be changed.


> It doesn't even specify how to display colors correctly that *ARE* in
> gamut. It is out of scope for the W3C spec to specify how out of
> gamut colors are mapped. Since there is no basis at all for any of
> the colors in CSS, since no source color space is defined, it's only
> by common coincidence that 255,0,0 ends up being red on most
> displays.

All colors specified in CSS itself are in sRGB. That has always been the 
case, since the very first CSS specification. The color profile 
properties that we are removing have nothing to do with that, they only 
affected the color profile of linked images.

But it's true that the Color module says that UAs "should" (rather 
then "must") honor CSS's color space.


> CSS is way behind the curve on this.

As you saw, the CSS WG tried, but had to give up because of lack of 
implementations. So you need to direct your ire to the people who 
decide what gets implemented. (Which isn't the WG, although we 
sometimes wished it were...)



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Friday, 11 July 2008 20:34:10 UTC