[cairo] RFC the idea of n-plane color support

[Ross McFarland]

Jost Boekemeier said:
> On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 02:51, Ross McFarland wrote:
>
>> attached is a patch that changes the color path in cairo allowing
>> arbitrary data to be passed through.
>
> I am not a cairo expert, but assuming you want to pass the device
> specific color (such as CMYK) wouldn't be
>
>   cairo_set_device_color()
>
> be a more appropriate name?

perhaps, though i don't really think so.

that would be placing unnecessary meaning on the color data. cairo doesn't
know or care what color it's dealing with (passing through) and i think that's
a good thing. one of the uses (the one i'm most interested in) would be device
color (cmyk.) however, i don't see a reason to limit and define colors at the
lowest levels. another possible use would be for cairo to work in device
indepentant space (xyz/spectral) which could be interesting and useful in some
situations.

i think it would be useful for the underlying structures to be abstract. and
on top of that (if wanted/needed) apis like _rgb_, _cmyk_, etc. could be added
to use the abstract system with a particular meaning.

again i'm not necessarily purposing this implementation, just the concept. if
people are interested in the idea i'm willing to try to implement whatever it
is decided would be the best solution.

--
-rm