Re: [css-color] vendor named color enhancement

Alex:

You'll want to look at the draft CSS Color Level 4 specification section on
defining colors relative to device-calibrated color profiles:

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-color/Overview.html#icc-colors

This syntax is designed to be extensible to any new color-definition system
against which printers and digital displays could be calibrated.  Although
the pre-defined profiles currently in the spec use numeric values, keyword
values are also possible.

Given the wide use of Pantone colours in printing and industrial design,
I'm suspect CSS WG members would be open to integrating it in the spec as a
pre-defined color profile, if all IP issues could be resolved with Pantone
in a manner that met W3C's patent requirements.

Otherwise, the syntax is designed to allow authors & printers/display
manufacturers to specify custom color systems without them having to be
added to the spec.

All of this is still a separate issue from calibrating printers / and
digital displays against Pantone standards, so that they correctly display
the named color.  As others have mentioned, that's a tricky question when
dealing with web content.  However, the new syntax would ensure that *if*
the display or printer is calibrated, authors would have a standard way of
communicating the desired color.

(PS, I'm not a member of this working group, just someone who's been
following the discussion.  Chris Lilley & Tab Atkins, the editors of CSS
Color Level 4, would be your best contacts for deciding on next steps.)

~Amelia Bellamy-Royds

On 21 July 2016 at 14:16, Alex Cohen <AlexCohen@xrite.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
> My name is Alex Cohen and I work for X-Rite/PANTONE.
>
>
> For a while now I’ve been contemplating the idea of extending css named
> colors to include vendor specific colors that are used across other
> industries such as print. Before going ahead and writing up a full
> proposal, I want to get the opinion of the people on this list to see if it
> is something you might be interested in.
>
>
> The idea is pretty simple. As you probably already know, Pantone is pretty
> well known across the printing industry for it’s color standards. Designers
> can specify Pantone color in a simple and efficient manner and rest assured
> that the final output product will reflect what they imagined. We want to
> apply that same concept to the web.
>
>
> A good example I like to use is a can of Coke. Wherever you are, anywhere
> you go, you will recognize the red they use, it’s their “brand” color. It’s
> important that this color be reproduced correctly across all their
> manufacturing plants so that you can compare two cans printed in totally
> different locations and not see a difference in color.
>
>
> The same could be applied to the web through a new set of vendor specific
> css color names.
>
>
> We’ve done a couple of trials here at Pantone and have gotten some
> exciting results. We have a patch submitted to WebKit which shows the idea
> in a working state.
>
>
> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159963
>
>
> A quick idea of how the vendor specific naming could work:
>
>   *   start with a vendor specific prefix.
>   *   continue with a color specific indicator.
>   *   finish with a book marker.
>
>
> Example:
>
> Actual PANTONE Color Name: PANTONE 101 C
>
> Web PANTONE Color Name: p101c
>
>
> Curious to know what you think.
>
>
> regards,
>
> Alex Cohen
>
> X-Rite/PANTONE
>
> alexcohen@pantone.com
>
>