<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Sep 25, 2007, at 1:53 PM, Jon Phillips wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">This is the best spec I've every seen! JonCruz, what do you think of</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">this easy to use color/swatch spec?<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Well, I think there is a huge problem with it: It's trying to define the wrong thing.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>In general artistic design work, I normally hit a different definition of "swatch". It's not just a color, it's a "sample" or "material". It could be a simple solid ink color, or it could be a heavy plaid cloth. Moving into software, "Gold" is another good example. "Gold" is a texture, not a color (just ask the Blender artists out there). From an artist/designer's viewpoint, they tend to think in terms of a swatch book as "a collection of things I've pulled together to use for this project". I *think* some of the problem comes from saying "Pantone swatch book" and such but not keeping in mind that it is just a subset of general "swatch books". That is, it is a "swatch book but with only solid paint swatches". Then again... I have used foil pantone books, so those definitely fall into the "material, not just color" category.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Anyway, I'd suggest that we either go with the concept that a "swatch" is a "material" rather than just a "color", or that we avoid the term "swatch" altogether. Generally I favor going with a bit more than just color alone.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>For SVG work, we'd probably like to be able to include gradients and patterns also. "Brushes" might also be nice... but I think those are something a bit different. For the apps I've seen that differentiate brushes from patterns, brushes get to be more of blobs of complex procedural code.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>And think of the use case. Say a comic artist is working on a project. He would probably want a "swatch book" for each of his characters, and perhaps one combining them. Then he might also want to add a book per character per lighting condition ("daytime", "nighttime", etc). When he went to use it, he might like to just select "Fred's skin" and apply it to an area. Then "Fred's shirt" for another. Those might just be simple RGB colors, or the skin might be a simple gradient and the shirt might be a checked pattern.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>However... the artist most definitely would benefit from being able to define those books once and then just reference them from each of the programs he uses to create things.</DIV></BODY></HTML>