On Tuesday 19 May 2009 08:32:33 Andrew Cowie wrote: > As long as the graphics arts industry continue to use those names > to identify, and the printing industry uses such names to > distinguish the pile of coloured bottles on the shelf, then > apparently there's nothing we can do. ie, we are free to come up > with our own names for inks, release them freely, and manufacture > said inks to our hearts content. But this doesn't do us the least > bit of good until such time as such inks were widely available at > printing houses as an alternative to the Pantone copyright ones. > And that ain't about to happen. > > It's exasperating, but the names & mapping are their property. I > think most people who need to would be happy to pay for access, but > a) such a datapack would be non-redistributable, and in any case b) > since people are used to getting it for "free" (in products whose > vendors have already paid Pantone for a licence), people don't > really get the idea that there's a cost to it. > > So maybe we need to go on a crusade to convince ink manufacturers > to _also_ label their products with [some hypothetical set of > redistributable] names, as well as Pantone ones.
Some further background information for people who might not know a lot about this .... http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/49236?theme=print http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=43129 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=733411 For further info use Google and search for "Linux Pantone" or similar. An add on Gtk+ application for Gimp and Inkscape might do the job. As always, it comes back to some brave sole who wants to write the code and circulate the software :) Someone has to do it. See also.. http://endsoftpatents.org/ Richard www.sheflug.org.uk -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
