[Openicc] CC Profiles In X Specification and dispwin

[Hal V. Engel]

On Tuesday 15 January 2008 13:36:17 Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
> Am 15.01.08, 21:31 +0100 schrieb edmund ronald:
> > Ink limitation, ink curves and linearization need to be exposed to
> > those doing the profiling since all of the above vary with the medium
> > being profiled. 

Most of these are exposed by the GutenPrint API.  Have a look at the 
gimp-print plugin (this is also used by CinePaint which has a CM wrapper on 
top of it as well).  In the UI you can set per channel and total ink limits 
(these have an OK UI) and ink curves (very bad UI currently).  There is 
currently no linearization functionality exposed in the UI so I don't know if 
this is supported at the API level.  But if it is not then this feature 
should be fairly far up on the GutenPrint Color Management TODO list along 
with making the ink curves UI more usable.

> > A good target -as always with open source products- 
> > would be to reproduce a simplified but robust version of the tools
> > available with a commercial RIP. 

I agree and Robert has told me that this is what he intends to do.  So I think 
everyone is on the same page with this.   But of course as the saying goes 
the devil is in the details.   GutenPrint 5.x added many of these features at 
least at the API level so this is definitely moving in that direction.  But I 
think the UI is currently lagging behind the driver back end . 

I have never used any of the commercial RIPs so I can't give Robert much 
feedback on what needs to happen to move in that direction.  If you have I am 
usre Robert is very open to your input.

> > I'm sure that if the tools to adjust 
> > settings were properly exposed, software tools ie. GUI interfaces for
> > adjusting ink curves would appear in short noticed, 

So far this has not happened at least outside of the GutenPrint project.  But 
in fairness at least some of this functionality is fairly new in the driver.  
I don't expect this to happen outside of the GutenPrint project any time soon 
unless some conditions are in place first.  First there must be enough other 
stuff in place for a significant number of users to start demanding it.  I 
think that this is close to happening since we now have a good suite of color 
management aware apps and are now seeing good support for the measurement 
devices and software needed for calibration and profiling.  But we are still 
seeing the DEs and window managers lag behind and we will need to see them at 
the very least stop doing things that mess up color management (IE. things 
like clobbering calibrated video LUTs).  In addition the DEs,  window 
managers and xorg will need to implement features needed to make all of this 
stuff work in an integrated way so that users can configure a full CM 
workflow without fighting with the underlaying systems.   For example I 
should be able to configure a color managed printing work flow in some 
central location and have that be available in all apps for all users on a 
system.  Currently this is not even remotely possible.

> > followed by 
> > end-user profiles. In particular, I myself own several scanning XY
> > spectros and would be delighted to generate printer profiles,
> > especially as the resulting publicity would doubtless bring me
> > end-user business in due course.

In spite of how new color management is to open source systems I think that 
there is actually a fairly large number of users relative to the total number 
of users that own various types of measurement devices.  In part this is 
because users of open source systems tend to be more technical than users of 
commercial systems.   Because of this I think it would be possible to 
organize an effort to create a repository for Printer profiles for these 
systems and have a significant pool of volunteers with the equipment needed 
to do the measurement work who could spread the work around.  But it would 
take a significant effort to get this underway. 

Hal