[mediaqueries][color] dynamic-range is a really ambiguous term and doesn't mention it's about color

[fantasai]

dynamic-range is totally not clear that it's about color, it should have the word "color" in it.

[dbaron]

This initially came up in the WG discussion we just had about #9074.

[frivoal]

I disagree. Technically, yes, dynamic range could apply to any quantity: from sound amplitude, to voltage of an electric signal, to frequency of an electromagnetic wave…

But css-speech non withstanding, CSS is largely a visual medium. And when speaking of visual things, there's very little ambiguity about what dynamic range refers to. Whether it's camera specifications, TV sales brochures, modes in the camera app on everyone's phone, the characteristics of camera film, printing… everybody just talks about (high) dynamic range, without "color" or any similar qualifier.

And if you wanted to really disambiguate, "color" is still too vague, as colors are a bundle of multiple quantities, and arguably, wide gamut could be described as high chromaticity dynamic range, and that's not what we're talking about here. So if we do want to disambiguate, we ought to go with brightness (or lightness, or luminance) dynamic range.

Not only is it non ambiguous in practice, it's also very discoverable, because (unqualified) dynamic range is the terminology everybody uses to talk about this matter. So I don't think additional qualifiers would help.

[svgeesus]

Similarly, from a theoretical purity perspective, the color property should be foreground-fill-color. But the spec describes that quite well, so the property name can be short:

This property specifies the primary foreground color of the element. This is used as the fill color of its text content

So I don't think we need a non-Web-compatible name change to peak-luminance-dynamic-range or whatever. Just describe it clearly in the specification.

[svgeesus]

So, close?

[svgeesus]

So I don't think we need a non-Web-compatible name change to peak-luminance-dynamic-range or whatever. Just describe it clearly in the specification.

Now defined clearly

[astearns]

@fantasai please close if you are satisfied with the discussion so far, or add more argument here for your position.