From CHandley@GANDALF.OTAGO.AC.NZ  Thu Jul 29 18:17:35 1993
Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 29 Jul 1993 18:17:34 -0400
Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
   with BSMTP id 0239; Thu, 29 Jul 93 18:16:21 EDT
Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 1732; Thu, 29 Jul 1993 18:16:20 -0400
Date:         Fri, 30 Jul 1993 10:20:00 GMT+1200
Reply-To: Chris Handley <CHandley@GANDALF.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Chris Handley <CHandley@GANDALF.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Organization: University of Otago
Subject:      Re: Color words (was: Re: comments on the batch of lujvo et
To: Erik Rauch <erikr@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Status: RO
X-Status: 
Message-ID: <-dxaIFlMkoL.A.ZO.900kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

jimc writes:

> With color, brightness and saturation are different dimensions. Bright
>means how much energy is coming in, as with day vs. night or with white
>paint vs. black paint.  Saturation means how closely the light is confined
>to one color (hue).  For example, at sea level the daytime sky is bright
>but not saturated, having a lot of white mixed with the blue.  On the other
>hand, many plant leaves are saturated green, i.e. a lot more green than
>gray, but they are not particularly bright.  (There are a few gray leaves
>and a few bright leaves too; also non-green ones.)
>
> I suggest that "bright" be removed as a keyword for {carmi} so that with
>colors it refers only to saturation.  Then {no'e carmi} would be
>"unsaturated" or "pastel".  {to'e manku} is inconvenient but is better
>semantically for "bright".  {blabi} is a particular color (zero saturation
>maximum brightness), and it's sloppy to use it to mean "low saturation".
>
I agree with most of this. If you think of the HLS cone (a cone with the
point down) then the 'colours' can be arranged around the perimeter with
white at the centre of the disc on the top and black at the point at the
bottom. Then one specifies a hue by (essentially) an angle, saturation by a
number in the range [0,1] (fractional distance from centre) and brightness
by distance from the point, again [0,1]. In this system 'white/whitish' as a
sort of synonym for 'pale' or 'unsaturated' becomes reasonable.


======================================================================
Chris Handley                                     chandley@otago.ac.nz
Dept of Computer Science                       Ph     (+64) 3-479-8499
University of Otago                           Fax     (+64) 3-479-8577
Dunedin, NZ
______________________________________________________________________
              There are three types of Computer Scientist:
                those who can count and those who can't.