Re: X11 Colors (was Last call comments on CSS3 module: color)

Chris Lilley wrote:
> On Thursday, May 30, 2002, 5:50:25 PM, Tobias wrote:
 >
> It remains to be shown, though, that any color naming syntax has any
> benefit over entity references which can be used to assign any desired
> color to any desired keyword, under user control, in any language,
> with 100% interoperability and no changes to the specification.

It is only beneficial, in my opinion, if it is not a homomorphic 
relation between color names and rgb values.

X11 color names provide the same benfit as an entity reference. CNS 
offers modifiers that change colors by an equation rather than a direct 
1:1 lookup in a table.  The same can be said if rgb was described by a 
triplet of names rather than a number i.e. rgb(light,medium,dark), 
though the relation is really just something where dark is translated to 
80%, light to 20% and medium to 50%, giving a pretty straightforward 
equation which is really just a lookup table for percentages.

The same is true if in hsl, the three values were presented by 
descriptive names i.e. if hsl was given by hsl(blue,medium,brightest). 
CNS seems to have a more interesting relationship than these examples, 
making entity references a not so viable option.

A quick summary of recent alternative named color proposals may be found 
at http://www.dylans.org/articles/namedColors.html

--
Dylan Schiemann
http://www.sitepen.com/
http://www.dylanschiemann.com/

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2002 19:42:20 UTC