[Openicc] Profile installation and association for Linux/Unix/X11

[Kai-Uwe Behrmann]

Am 21.04.08, 01:58 +1000 schrieb Graeme Gill:

> I've been working on the installation details for display ICC profiles
> on various operating systems, and was wondering if there is any
> consensus with regard to Linux & X11.
> 
> The profiles stored in the root window _ICC_PROFILE property (and the parallel

Please not there are several atoms possible, according the the screen 
configuration and the number of screens:
https://www.oyranos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Oyranos/X11_Requirements#ICC_Profiles_in_X

>  one that I store in the XrandR 1.2 output property) will like all 
properties
> be volatile, lasting only as long as the X server, and hence will need
> re-loading every time the X11 server starts. It would be good to have
> a convention as to where installed profiles live, and what device
> they are associated with.

The profile location should hopefully be cleared, by previous dicussions 
on list and the draft about the OpenICC profile proposal.

The association should, in my opinion be handled by a software layer which 
is familiar with devices. Unfortunedly I did not come so far to look 
deeper at HAL.

<snip>

> Is there any convention as to how the information is stored
> as to a particular profiles association with a device ?

Yes and no.
So far there is a implementation in Oyranos available. It stores its 
configuration in a Elektra database. Library calls are available and a 
commandline interface:
https://www.oyranos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Oyranos/Device_Profiles
The above link covers as well the _ICC_PROFILE_xxx generic setup at X11 
start time by a call in .xinitrc .

> Without such a convention, it's not really possible to setup a general
> mechanism to ensure that the display root window properties are
> set correctly, or that the display calibration is initialized properly.

As you possibly know with the distribution of ArgylCMS, colour management 
applications and libraries are not very widely distributed. The most 
distributed system we see is lcms. It can be easily relied on its 
availability. For other parts it is not clear where to find what.

> Of course it would be easy enough to invent a simple text file
> format that lives in the color directory to map profile names
> to a device name, that will work with my particular toolset if
> there is no particular convention to be followed.

You may start such a part in Argyll. Honestly I doubt that it would be of 
much help to start different conventions for the sake of Linux/BSD. If you 
want to propos a concept, which we can be discussed here on this list and 
which is possible to follow by other implementations, that might become a 
good point.

kind regards
Kai-Uwe Behrmann
-- 
developing for colour management 
www.behrmann.name + www.oyranos.org