[Openicc] Questions about color pickers and graphics libraries under LINUX

[Hal V. Engel]

On Monday 11 February 2008 22:38:08 Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Feb 11, 2008, at 5:15 PM, Hal V. Engel wrote:
> > Actually this is one of those chicken and egg things.  Why would
> > the OS (in
> > the general sense since with X11 systems we are really talking
> > about the
> > windowing system and video drivers and not the OS - kernel - for
> > the most
> > part) be upgraded to handle hardware that does not exist?
>
> Well, I'm asking for solutions for existing hardware. The fact that
> the hardware needs to get better does not mean it's OK to wait for
> system wide display compensation. We need that too.

I agree totally.  My point was that support for higher bit depth displays and 
system wide color management are separate  issues.  Of course the existence 
of wide gamut displays only makes the lack of system wide color management 
all the more apparent.  Which is the point I think you are trying to make 
when writing about this newer hardware.  

>
> I'm currently using an NEC LCD2180 WG LED which has a gamut larger
> than that of Adobe RGB (1998). There is no system wide display
> compensation even on Mac OS X. Right now the ars technica banner is
> an insane neon red in Safari, WebKit, FireFox 2 and FireFox 3 (by
> default). I can optionally turn it on in FireFox 3 and then magic
> happens.
>
> This is using an 8bpc DVI connection. It's been shipping from NEC for
> almost a year. There are other LED displays coming out left and right
> and they too have considerable deviations from sRGB.

It is great to hear that Firefox 3 has functional color management.  This is a 
big plus for the open source community and it shows that we can lead the way 
forward.   I don't think anyone here has much influence over what Microsoft 
or Apple will do about this issue but we can have some influence over what 
happens in the open source world.  Now we need to work with the X.Org and 
various window manager/desktop environment teams to get this issue handled on 
that level.  

Hal