[Openicc] List Scope

[Hal V. Engel]

On Monday 28 January 2008 20:39:31 Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008, Graeme Gill wrote:
> > 1) I wouldn't call the discussions "low level" (apart perhaps
> >    from Robert cross posting some Gimp specific setup details).
>
> Dithering algorithms for ink dots on paper are low level.
>
> > 2) This is usually a very quiet list, so I can't see how you think
> >    other discussions are being "drowned out".
>
> I agree that the list is usually quiet.  It is a clear problem is that
> there is insufficent representation here from people outside of
> hard-core color science and printing.  It is quite excellent that you
> are here, yet it is also unfortunate that the type of people who would
> bring your excellent work to the "common man" don't seem to be here
> any more, or perhaps they are not really heard (Kai-Uwe?).  

I think the real issue is that there is only representation here from a subset 
of the projects that really need to be involved.  And I don't think that most 
of those projects that are currently unrepresented have ever been represented 
here.   

This list is presumably where all of these projects are supposed to meet to 
exchange ideas and to work out things like standards and specifications.  But 
it is kind of hard to meet with, for example, the KDE or GNOME folks if they 
are not represented here.  This is not intended as a dig at the KDE or GNOME 
projects.  At the moment the lists members are mostly from projects involved 
in color management applications,  graphics and printing.  That still leaves 
a lot of room for other groups like KDE or GNOME to join in but until they do 
we will have a hard time working issues outside of those areas where there is 
representation on the list.  

Right now the printing people are here and they are asking for help.  It 
appears that they are getting it and this speaks well for the list.    This 
is the reason that there is so much printing related activity.  I would be 
overjoyed if there were the same level of involvement from other areas such 
as X.Org and the DEs.

When Kai-Uwe gets Oyranos to the point where it is ready for real world use by 
a wide range of users projects like KDE and GNOME will need to integrate that 
functionality into things like the KDE Control Center to make it truly 
accessable to users.  But at this point I don't think that the movers and 
shakers at KDE or GNOME even know that Oyranos exists let alone that it could 
add a lot of value to the user environments that they are trying to create.  
But this is exactly what they will need to do in order to bring CM to 
the "common man".

> It is not 
> sufficient that color management is supported by specific applications
> since color management needs to be ingrained in the system using
> standard mechanisms and well supported throughout all applications
> which use color.

I agree 100%.  But for this to happen groups like X.Org, KDE and GNOME need to 
be involved and at present their involvement is limited or non-existant.  

>
> The freedesktop organization is organized in order to try to extract
> some commonality from otherwise competing groups while recognizing
> that all groups are important according to their own measure of
> success.  Visit http://www.freedesktop.org/ to see what it is all
> about.  Check out the list of standards and software.  I notice that
> Oyranos is listed in the Software section, but Argyll and Little CMS
> are not mentioned.  

I think another relevant web page is

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/OpenIcc 

and it lists Oyranos, LCMS, LProf and ArgyllCMS, GIMP,  GutenPrint, CUPS, 
Scribus and a bunch of other projects as being involved in this topic.  But 
for some reason X.Org, KDE, GNOME do not show up in the list of projects 
involved in this topic.  Maybe a little over the top but the door does swing 
both ways.

> While it is likely that some listed specifications 
> include interfaces necessary to support color management, I do not
> see a specification from this group listed to provide a standard way
> to provide color management in the freedesktop environment.

This is a valid point and it is one I have made on this list and on other 
forums in the past.  

>
> > 3) I imagine that the discussions is just about to peter out. I was
> >    going to take a look at adding some tools in Argyll to address
> >    printer calibration. I guess if I make some progress in this
> >    area I'll stick to announcing it on the Argyll mailing list.
>
> That would be going too far the other way.  It is a problem that color
> management is too balkanized already.  

I don't agree that CM is balkanized but I do agree that perhaps Graeme is over 
reacting.  I also think that Bob is over reacting as well.  

The real issue for us is how limited our resources are.  All of the current 
color management centric projects like Oyranos, ArgyllCMS, LProf and LCMS are 
basically one man shows or are only supported by a very small team of part 
time programmers.  I can count on the fingers of my hands all of those who 
actively work on open source color management applications and just barley 
use some fingers on the second hand and some of those people work on more 
than one of these projects.  All of those people are here on this list and as 
far as I can tell all of them want to help move this forward.  With these 
limitations we must decide how to best use those resources.  Do I spend time 
writing standards and specifications documents or do I move my own project 
forward?
 
> We need more discussion of how 
> to incorporate color management so that it is readily available to
> users so that open source can usefully compete with Microsoft Windows
> and Apple's OS-X.

Again I agree 100% but right now some of the major parties that need to be 
involved in that discussion are not here.  We need to figure out how to fix 
that issue before we can make much progress on incorporating color management 
at the system level. 

Hal