Re: Why "color"

At 17:01  +0100 19/02/09, Daniel Glazman wrote:
>Simon Fraser wrote:
>
>>>Probably not. On the same course, let's introduce "kolor", "Farbe",
>>>"–’ÂÚ" and "couleur" as synonyms, too.
>>
>>You forgot about Armenian.....
>
>I'm surprised nobody suggested klingon.
>

"For the Dani people of Papua New Guinea, only 
two basic color terms have been reported: [mili], 
for "cold, dark colors"; and [mola], for "warm, 
light colors" ".

from "HOW MANY COLORS SHOULD BE IN THE RAINBOW? 
REPRESENTING COLOR NAMES IN KNOWLEDGE BASES".

<http://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/convergence03/all%20data/paper%20031-23.pdf>

Introducing new words for the concept "color" 
means we would have to look into how colors are 
distinguished in various cultures. It would 
clearly be incorrect to use a Dani word for the 
name of the attribute "color", with a value that 
was (for example) "red", because they don't have 
a concept of "red" in that culture.

Then, of course, there are the accessibility 
questions:  people who are color-blind or 
partially so, have corresponding people who are 
more than usually aware of color differences.

You see, you can climb into very deep waters at the W3C with simple questions.

I think the answer is (a) the W3C normally works 
in US english and (b) it has historically been 
that way, and since it's part of the markup, not 
the material presented to users (i.e. it's a 
"programming term"), it's OK to hve only one 
spelling.  I seem to recall we have terms that 
are mis-spelt, that we have chosen not to correct.

I suggest we stick with "color" :-).
-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 19 February 2009 17:21:10 UTC