Re: grayscale vs. color

[Struan Gray <struan.gray(at)sljus.lu.se>]

Martin Schultz, martin.schultz@dkrz.de writes:

> who says they must compete? If they can license
> a bad editor, they should be able to license some
> software to generate CMYK.

    They are competing in the sense that you're trying to make
IDL do something that Adobe applications (among others) already
do very well and at a cheaper price.  It is only worthwhile if
you absolutly insist that your computer only ever runs one single
program.

    As I pointed out, IDL already generates perfectly
good-looking CYMK every time it uses a colour printer driver.  If
I need more control than the printer driver allows me, any modern
graphics or page layout program can turn out professional-quality
seperations.  If I'm publishing a book or a thesis with colour
plates the seperations are done by the printer and I just have to
supply my monitor profile and check a proof or two.

    It would be helpful to make IDL able to use colour profiles
and to warn about out-of-gamut colours, particularly when sharing
visualisations with other users, but I don't want a half-assed
implementation that I then have to second guess the whole time
and I vastly prefer that IDL stick to its knitting and fix more
serious problems.

    I'm not trying to be argumentative.  I'm genuinely baffled as
to why you and David feel IDL has no CYMK abilities at all, and
what exactly you feel should be added.  I'm interested to hear
about specific problems you have had.


Struan