[Openicc] List Scope

[Robert Krawitz]

   Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:25:02 +1100
   From: Graeme Gill <graeme at argyllcms.com>

   Bob Friesenhahn wrote:

   But I guess if the general consensus is that such discussions are
   too technical and low level for this list, then there is a simple
   solution, and that is that it's time to start a mailing list for
   those interested in discussing color in open software, where
   discussions about standards, interoperability and technical details
   can be discussed to a level that will allow some progress.

   I'd suggest that it be called "OpenColor", and I'm quite happy to
   see if I can have such a list created at freelists.org (or if
   someone else has a suggestion of a suitable host that would be fine
   too - a source forge project perhaps ?).

   As soon as it's created we can shift all this to that list, and
   leave openicc in peace.

It's not like openicc is swamped with traffic and our discussion is
some little offshoot.

   > 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.  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.

   I suspect you've largely missed the boat on this one. The time for
   a top down approach was a few years ago, before applications that
   need color managements solved the problems themselves (Scribus,
   Gimp etc). I certainly offered at that time to put my experience
   and code to work, but there seemed little interest, and I have had
   to work on projects that might make me a living instead. It seems
   likely now that such standardisation will have to emerge more
   organically and bottom up, out of the effort to actually make
   things work together a bit more smoothly together.

Grand, top-down initiatives only work (IMHO) when there's a sufficient
body of work for people to have gained experience with the
techniques.  Until that happens, there simply isn't the interest nor
the technical knowledge required to create a useful standard.

   > That would be going too far the other way.  It is a problem that
   > color management is too balkanized already.  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.

   There seems little serious interest in this. Lots of "nice to
   have", but no serious application of resources. Kai-Uwe has
   valiantly fought ahead with Oyranos, but things will proceed much
   as they have done when it's all being done by volunteers in their
   spare time.

   Killing off the some of the first signs of activity and animation
   in this mailing list, certainly hasn't helped much.

I'm interested in continuing :-)