Thanks for following up on this discussion and rescuing it from inconclusive bit-rot.
At 2025-06-18T00:18:29+0100, Deri wrote: > On Sunday, 8 June 2025 02:26:35 BST G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > > and with very little idea of what you are doing. > > > > I see no evidence that Deri doesn't grasp the nature of what he's > > proposing. > > I think there has been a misunderstanding of the work I did on > investigating the colour palettes used by different output drivers. > The work started because Branden suggested:- > > > Would it make sense to offer two macro files, "color-html.tmac" and > > "color-x11.tmac"? I reckon the "html" and "xhtml" devices would load > > the former by default and the X11 devices the latter by default. > > > > Which should be the default for the other devices? > > > > Of course no matter which macro file is loaded by default, a document > > can select a different one by invoking the `mso` request on the > > preferred one. [lists.gnu.org not responding so I can't add a link > > but the post was on 06/06/25 at 05:24:21 (BST)] > > Currently, grotty, grohtml, grodvi, grops and gropdf all have a set of > colour names as defaults in their respective tmac files. Yes, and as with special character and font identifiers, having a set of names with consistent usage across output devices makes life easier for users want to exercise Kernighan's innovation of device-independence. I acknowledge that the incommensurability of color spaces is a honking big theoretical problem, but it _is_ only a theoretical one since the only color spaced by groff's output drivers as shipped is RGB. When someone drops a patch for color names in, say, CYMK in our laps, we can then worry about how best to integrate it. > Naming colours is useful in discussing a particular palette to use in > a document, and there is an advantage if the named colours produce > identical RGB colours across different output devices. There are two > main naming schemes X11 (came to fruition in the late 80s and 90s) and > HTML (first working draft of CSS 3 Colour Module in 2001). [1] > > Both schemes used the same names and in all but 4 cases (green, gray, > maroon, purple) the RGB shade is the same. X11 also added extra names > as numbered variations of (some of) the base colours, which was not > duplicated in HTML. [2] > > The default names for gropdvi, grops and gropdf, all follow the X11 > names and colours (as they were in the 90s, extra colours have been > added since then which have not been included by groff), and now it > would make sense if grotty used the same colour names and values as > well, since it now supports the same colour range. This sounds reasonable to me, but if I doesn't to someone else, I'd appreciate it if they'd speak up and offer a case against. > The difficult one to understand is grohtml. It has all the X11 names > but almost all the values don't match either X11 or HTML. In effect it > is groff's own colour scheme! The file color-html.tmac (which was > subsequently integrated into html.tmac) was added to groff in October > 2001, at that time the colours were just a W3C recommendation [3], so > browsers may have been doing their own thing. Ah, good old days of PHP3, for instance. > Decisions to make:- > > A) Is it a good idea to separate the colour names away from the > individual device tmacs into two files "colors-x11.tmac" and > "colors-html.tmac", and replace with appropriate .mso calls. > > B) Should the extra colours which have been added to X11 over the > years be added to colors-x11.tmac? > > C) Should colors-html.tmac be "fixed" so that it now follows the W3C > standard rigidly? I share your desire to get feedback from groff users, power- and otherwise, on these questions. > [1] https://docs.aspose.com/html/net/tutorial/html-color-names/ > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names#Numbered_variants > [3] https://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-css3-color-20010305#x11-color Regards, Branden
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