ColorPalette

Swatches

Still needed:

• Per-Document swatch palettes (see below)
• "None" and "Unset" swatches at the beginning of every palette. (effectively permanent swatches as they'd be there in empty palettes too)
• Gradient Swatches.
• Pattern Swatches.
• Indication of selected object already having a swatch color assigned (such as an inverted outline). Should show both the fill and stroke.
• Right-click menu with various options.
• Swatches to support other color profiles (CMYK, LaB, etc)

Per-Document Swatch Palette

We need to explore the options for how to store per-document swatches in a SVG compliant manner. Currently it seems like storing these in the defs section would be the optimal method.

Per-Document Swatches need to:

• Collect colors currently in document (either automatically or manually invoked).
• Allows the addition of swatches to the palette without them being used in the document.
• Allow importing and exporting from/to external palette files or other documents.

New Swatch File Format

A more robust and flexible format for swatches is necessary. Currently we use the Gimp's swatch format, but we (and others) will should look into collaborating on a more flexible and standardized format moving forward.

The format needs to support various color profiles (RGB, CMYK, LaB, etc). Additionally it needs to support flat colors, gradients, patterns, and alpha/transparency on everything as well.

Color Dropper

• The dropper and palette should be treated just like additional individual color models, making them easier to apply however desired. It just makes sense. https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/172236 --Daghead 18:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

• Status: Halfway implemented, needs more work.
  • question: is this actually accurate? is it really halfway implemented as-is?)
  • suggestion: The color dropper toolbar is pretty bare-bones and it seems like it could have 6 or so "history swatches" of the recent colors the dropper has picked up. These could then be dragged and dropped to a swatch palette or anywhere else colors can be dragged and dropped to. -ScislaC)

• See also CurrentColorWidget

Other suggestions

• Accuraced palettes from colour norms, like Pantone, Trumatch, Focoltone, Toyo, etc. (since lots of people uses it, specially professionally)
  • problem: some are patented/copyrighted, which seems each norm company like this must be contacted for authorization (?) - as well, is also an open-source colour norm standard welcome? (which works on both video/printing outputs, like Pantone seems to be?)

• Possibility to import .acf (Ascii Colour File?) and .bcf (Binary Colour File?) from Macromedia Freehand - .acf, since is a .txt based file (each colour channel is 16bit, meaning 48bit for RGB and 64bit for CMYK), seems to be an open format since it's a .txt )
  • note: importing .acf and .bcf can be really useful when colour norm companies patented their colour standards (which makes difficult Inkscape distributing these ones), and lots of vectorial apps users are still hugely dependant of these colour norms)

example of Macromedia Freehand .acf palette file (converted from Unix rgb.txt): http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/UnixRgbAcf

• (note: contacting personally each colour norm companies is more than welcome, even expecting negative feedback as i got from Trumatch, which said it's patented and copyrighted, and they licenceed to software systems - my proposal: with artists and engineers help, how about us making an open-source project for a colour norm, regreting print and display, and trying to make it the most popular (even on offset printers, and inkjet/laser printer manufacturers!) colour norm than ever?)

References

"468485 - custom palette"

469121 - "Curve editing and right click menu"

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