This is huge... This opens another area of proprietary design which affects the fashion industry.
On Nov 30, 2017 19:36, Christoph Schäfer <christoph-schae...@gmx.de> wrote: > Hi all, > > > > I have some incredible news for you. > > > Yesterday freieFarbe/freeColour received a message from the German > industrial standards organisation (DIN) that our proposal for an open > standard for "Open Colour Communication" based on the HLC colour model (aka > as Lhc) has been accepted and will become a German national standard soon > (because we have prepared this carefully during 2016 and 2017). > > > What does this mean? First, it will no longer be an initiative by a tiny > non-profit organisation, but a national standard, and since DIN is very > influential internationally, it will become a de-facto standard in other > countries as well. Plus, it may be possible to make this an ISO standard > via DIN. > > > In addition, DIN will support the formulation of the standard and our work > with substantial sums, not the least because the creation of a standard and > pushing its way through all the respective instances and expert checks is > expensive (would've been 25,000 EUR in our case, which has been reduced to > zero, because it's an open and non-commercial project). We will also > receive some money for meetings, travel expenses etc. from DIN. > > > One of the reasons we got so far is support by parts of the printing > industry in Germany and Switzerland. The prototype of the printed colour > reference, which we presented to DIN, was only possible thanks to a > donation of inks by an international manufacturer of digitial printing > machines. We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and > Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be > reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours, so printing companies can actually > order spot colour inks by just inserting the HLC colour code in their order > forms. > > > The printed colour reference has the form a ring binder. Colours are > sorted by their H-values (H=Hue) in steps of ten. Luminacity (L) uses steps > of five, and chroma (C) also steps of ten. We plan to refine this later to > also present the H-values in steps of five. > > > This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone > or RAL. Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone & > co, which is not only better, but also supported by a national standards > organisation and some major players in the industry. There are no licensing > costs to pay for anyone who wants to use the colour system, not for > software producers and neither for the ink mixing formulas. The latter is > important, because vendors like Pantone ask for a lot of money from ink > producers for the mixing formulas, whilst the open HLC system is gratis. > > > The PDF version of the colour reference and the digital colour palettes > will be published under a CC licence (CC BY-ND 4.0). The printed colour > reference will cost some money to cover the production costs, but it will > be much cheaper than the ones from Pantone & co, because we only need to > cover our expenses and do not intend/aren't allowed to as a non-profit > organisation to commercialise it. Moreover, everyone else will be free to > print their own references, and there are no trademarks involved. > > > Another important aspect is that the HLC colour system, being a national > standard, will be very hard to attack legally by commercial vendors like > Pantone or RAL, who are known to play hardball when it comes to > competition. They would have to take on DIN, which I'm sure they'll think > about twice. > > > We'll start with Germany and Switzerland, because that's where most of our > members and supporters are from, but we plan to release an English version > of the colour reference as soon as the colour system has been formally > adapted as a standard. > > > Currently, an older version of the HLC palette is already included in > Scribus 1.5.3+ (L*a*b*) and the latest LibreOffice (sRGB). And speaking of > Scribus, the juicy bit is that the colour reference will most likely be > produced with Scribus 1.5.4svn, because it offers the highest colour > precision for fill colours (64 bit). No other DTP software comes close in > this regard. > > > > Christoph > _______________________________________________ > CREATE mailing list > CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org > https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create >
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