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

[Ross McFarland]

On Sat, 2004-10-30 at 08:26, Jost Boekemeier wrote:
> [I forgot the CC in my last mail]
> 
> > you could
> > conceivably represent all of the possible colors
> > they could print, but
> > you wouldn't be able to preserve the usage of
> > specific inks.
> 
> How does PDF/Postscript solve this?  

both allow specifying color in CMYK, CIEXYZ, CIELab, and i think even
with an arbitrary number of colorants.

the most common case with Postscript (which is almost always bound for a
printer) is CMYK which accounts for the majority of driver generated
jobs. text is the biggest reason for that, you have to use pure black
for black text or otherwise the slightest mis-alignment between color
planes will make the text blurry and hard to read due to color shifts
and such. 

PDF to the chagrin of printer companies (for the exact reasons i'm
talking about, loss of what's supposed to be pure black) often uses
CIELab when generated by OSX and/or with certain common settings from
acrobat. (i can't remember which, may even be both.)

-- 
-rm
http://www.neces.com/