[scribus-dev] Downloadable colour palettes

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi all,

In a mostly internal discussion, Craig suggested not to expand the number of colour palettes post 1.4.3, as the sheer number could confuse users. He contemplated making additional palettes available for download instead, similar to the hyphenation dictionary choice he has implemented.

This sounds like an excellent idea to me, and we could even reduce the number of palettes being shipped with Scribus by default. What we need to make sure, though, is that the palettes are only available from a genuine Scribus server (e.g. our current svn server), as some of the more restrictive licenses demand that the particular files are being shipped with Scribus.

Strange as it seems, it may also help to attract new colour palette donors. For example, a colour vendor could upload its palettes (or ask for them to be uploaded) to a Scribus repository.

Another (additional) possibility/opportunity would be to link to freely available colour palettes in a format that Scribus can already read, e.g., http://www.brillux.de/fileadmin/redaktion/downloads/scala/paletten/Adobe_Photoshop_6-CS/Scala-Kunstdruck.aco 

Unfortunately, not all gratis palettes are provided for download in their orginal format, but instead as ZIP files (e.g., http://www.orafol.com/tl_files/content/downloads/colourpalettes/illustrator/oracal951_illu.zip), so an extended download feature would also need to be able to extract ZIP files.

Expanding my previous thoughts, users should also be enabled to add paths/URLs to colour palettes that aren't hard-wired into Scribus.

Finally, I think that both "outsourcing" colour palettes and adding external sources should require users to learn about the licences/Terms of Use, and if none them is available, a link to the vendor site, if only to check the legal aspects. Before downloading, that is. And we'd need a UI for this, of course.


Christoph