[Scribus] Color swatches - Legal and technical issues

[Branko Vukelic]

On Wednesday 31 January 2007 23:50:29 avox wrote:

> I very much share jon's doubts about establishing such an open standard.
> To implement a new color matching system one would have to provide also
> the inks, not only the colors. So the only viable solution would be to
> encourage
> ink producers to create/use such a standard.

That is hopefully going to be one of the topics of the Libre Graphics Meeting 
2007. Of course, I never said it would be easy. I don't even know how that 
would be implemented concretely. :D

> From the perspective of an open source user, the only annoying bit about
>
> Pantone
> is that they don't provide open swatches. I'm quite happy with them selling
> their inks and matching books and whatever, but keeping their color name
> lists
> closed is just plain stupid.
>
> So while encouraging ink producers to adopt an open standard is a good
> longterm
> option, the current obstacle is getting Pantone swatches onto FLOSS
> programs.
>
> For that I see only two ways:
>
> a) Discuss this issue with Pantone and convince them to publish this data.
> b) Create measurement tables from Pantone matching books in a way that
> Pantone
>     can't successfully challenge in court (it might be a good idea to
> publish those
>     tables from a country which doesnt have as suffocating IP laws as the
> US)
>
> With b) in the offer we might even be able to convince Pantone of a) :-)

Well, that is a perfectly reasonable short-term solution, provided, of cours, 
that (b) is really legal and feasible (a lot can be accomplished by just 
prolonging the process long enough for the defendants to run out of money if 
they ever decide to take it to court). ;)