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

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 11:01:17 AM, Rudolph wrote:
>
> RG> I find myself writing things like rgba(0, 0, 0, .5) or rgba(192, 192,
> RG> 192, .8) dozens of times a day, mostly for shadows. It's always some
> RG> shade of gray with some alpha value.
>
> RG> Do you think there's room for a grayscale color shorthand?
>
> What properties would you want it to have? For example, would 50% gray correspond to a color which is visually 50% between black and white?
>
> The CIE lightness (L*) has that property. L=0 is black, L=100 is the media white. L=50 is exactly a mid grey.
>
> It could be used by itself or as part of the CIE Lab or LCH color spaces (C and H are chroma and hue angle) - to give warm or cool greys for example.

I'm definitely interested in investigating the CIELab/LCH color spaces
at some point, and we could potentially hook gray() up to that instead
of RGB.  I wouldn't want to make a choice yet.

~TJ