RE: [css4-color] Grayscale shorthand (with alpha)

My curiosity is more about...

Why is "perfect gray" special vs. the near-grays?

For example, are designers only interested in rgb(22, 22, 22, <somealpha>) or also rgb(22, 27, 32, <somealpha>)?

-----Original Message-----
From: Tab Atkins Jr. [mailto:jackalmage@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:58 PM
To: Brian Manthos
Cc: Rudolph Gottesheim; www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: [css4-color] Grayscale shorthand (with alpha)

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:52 PM, Brian Manthos <brianman@microsoft.com> wrote:
> I'm curious to hear more about why gray is so popular from an artistic / designer perspective.
>
> Is it the "black and white" muted photo affect (in which case a filter might be better)?   I have a few other guesses as well.

"gray" is a wide term here.  Anything between white and black is covered there, and those two colors are definitely quite common.  I gave a use-case where near-white and near-black are often used for background and text to reduce the harshness of pure black-on-white contrast.  Writing that out requires, currently, repeating yourself.
There's a potential readability win for this case.

~TJ