[CREATE] Questions and reflections about gradients

[Jon Cruz]

On Nov 3, 2010, at 5:34 PM, Sven Langkamp wrote:

> 
> * I don't see the point in Foreground/Background colors
> <http://www.mail-archive.com/create@lists.freedesktop.org/msg01272.html>
> ;-) I see even less the point in having gradients swatches defined with
> Foreground/Background colors... This is a "feature" you can find in
> Photoshop and Gimp gradients. For sure I don't see how it would be
> useful in an exchange format...
> 
> The feature itself makes sense (I recently added it to Krita on request). That is mostly used for foreground-transparent and foreground-background gradients that are handled by the applications internally but not exported.


There are actually many cases where having foreground and background color gradients comes in handy. Artists can really take advantage of them.

As a programmer you might think of them as something similar to code templates in C++.

As far as an exchange format goes, they probably will be useful. If nothing else, an exchange format should not lose any data. Instead it is better to include a combined set of possible features. At the very least you will want a lossless data format.