[Openicc] ISO - Open vs. Free (was Linux CM ideology)

[Chris Lilley]

On Saturday, February 12, 2011, 1:44:14 AM, Chris wrote:


CM> On Feb 11, 2011, at 11:04 AM, Chris Lilley wrote:

>> Small correction - W3C charges for Membership, yes. 

>> Comments are solicited and accepted from the Public at all stages of standard development. without charge (your comment seemsd to indicate that all participation at W3C was subject to a charge which, as you well know, is not correct).

CM> I will agree with Leonard's comments. I commented a number of
CM> times on CSS2 and then CSS3 long time ago on the very antiquated
CM> section on gamma for various operating systems, and also on the
CM> proposed tags for CSS3 that would have allowed tagging without
CM> embedding, and how that needed to be cleaned up a bit. Nothing
CM> happened. No one changed anything.

That is incorrect; the section on gamma for various operating systems was removed from the spec, due to your (and other's) comments.

CM>  No one really said anything. No
CM> one seemed to understand what I was saying. 

The CSS WG uses the same list for public comments and also for general public discussion. Personally I consider this a mistake, because comments like yours can be responded to by anyone from the public (and the public typically has few ideas on color management, most of them incorrect).

CM> And then finally after
CM> some time I mentioned it all again for CSS3 and what I was told
CM> was basically it was too late. They were pulling all of the color
CM> tags out of CSS3 because no browsers had implemented support for
CM> them, and yet they weren't removing the b.s. gamma section even
CM> though that has never been implemented by browsers either, and is
CM> also factually untrue, and not good advice anyway.

As mentioned, the gamma section was removed.

Yes, the part of overriding the rendering intent of embedded images in profiles was removed. It wasn't implemented and probably wasn't a good idea, either.

CM> So what's old, wrong, and not implemented is what's in CSS3. What
CM> could have been useful with modifications, went no where.

Both statements incorrect.

The gamma stuff was pulled from CSS *2.1*, not 3.

The stuff that could be useful with modifications was modified and did go somewhere.

CM> So from my perspective, this expert's advice for the W3C totally
CM> fell on deaf ears. 

I'm sorry if you didn't get good feedback from your comments. But they did have an effect, even if belatedly (I only got involved with CSS again a couple of years ago).

CM> And considering it takes epochs for the W3C to
CM> get things done, it might be 20 years before there's another
CM> opportunity for a CSS3.5 or 4 the properly accounts for color.

Since 'getting things done' implies having a test suite and demonstrating that at least two implementations pass each test, yes, it can take a while to get to the final standard.

Chris, has your earlier experience with W3C soured you to commenting again, or should I invite you to comment on the spec where the actual colour management stuff is?

-- 
 Chris Lilley   Technical Director, Interaction Domain                 
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead, Fonts Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG
 Member, CSS, WebFonts, SVG Working Groups