Talk:Shades of gray

Where are the grays???
It's great to have all this information in one place.

What is not great is the total absence of any attempt to depict the grays listed as a little swatch of color. Of course, there should be a disclaimer above all such depictions, explaining that the computer cannot always depict a visual color accurately. But at least readers will have something to go by.

ALSO: The 3×3 array of grays at the upper right ("Connotations") is a) completely incomprehensible and b) entirely inappropriate for this article.Daqu (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Flat?
This article states: "There is no mechanism for displaying metallic colors on a flat computer screen." Really? Could metallic colors be displayed on a curved screen? Why the qualification? At least, someone spelled gray correctly.
 * It isn't entirely correct even. What the article is trying, but failing, to say is that these names indicate more than just the a colour, but also a particular kind of metallic reflectivity. Even on a flat computer screen this can be displayed quite convincingly, e.g. in games, film and particularly well-shot photography. Just don't expect every pixel to have the same colour or, excepting still photography, to remain the same all the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 18:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 16 October 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Concerns about ENGVAR/RETAIN have been considered more important that consistency between articles in this case. Jenks24 (talk) 13:57, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Shades of gray → Shades of grey – Per WP:CONSISTENCY and stable consensus at the Grey article. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 19:49, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose was Support per prior discussions at main article. PaleAqua (talk) 22:04, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm looks like I actually renamed grey to gray in the category page back into 2010 before this page was created looking through various page histories... striking my vote while I reconsider my stance. PaleAqua (talk) 01:27, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Switching to opposed. While the main article is at grey and has been for over a decade, likewise for most but not all of the other something grey color term articles. The category page has been at shades of gray for at least 6 years and the current version of this page has been approximately 5 years. Given that time I'm not sure consistency is strong enough counter argument. Also looking at ngrams from other varieties of English show a similar usage of the gray spelling to how grey is used in America. PaleAqua (talk) 06:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't support "consistency" as a trump card for article names, but in this case it is quite important. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 18:13, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose Comment : This appears to be some sort of WP:ENGVAR issue, and we don't normally make such decisions based on consistency arguments relative to other articles. At first glance, the article appears to be entirely written in American English ("gray", "grayscale", "color", "colorfulness", "normalized"). Why, exactly, should we change that? I'm leaning toward thinking we should WP:RETAIN the current variety, unless the article history some inappropriate recent change. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC) "Comment" changed to "Oppose" later. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Normally I would agree with ENGVAR / RETAIN. And I do agree with keeping the article American English, similar to what is done with the grey article. Both gray and grey spellings are used in American English, and the grey article has used the grey spelling for longer than this article has existed. The various shades of articles were created by merging a lot of stub articles that at one time had been merged into the main articles and went through a few renames; mostly variations vs shades before that was settled with an RfC. It might be possible to check spellings and ENGVAR used in the articles that got merged into here ( if I recall it as a mixature ) but consistecy with the grey article seems like it is stronger to me especially given the history. One other thing to note with the grey related articles is that there are two versions of a lot of the color navigation templates one with the a spelling and one with the e spelling. See Shades of grey for example. And yes I realize the grey / gray template parameter is called US. Mostly because it the parameter that also changes the spelling of colors vs colours in other color related templates. PaleAqua (talk) 17:43, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:RETAIN. The nom's argument, for consistency with Grey, is not a strong argument. Now PaleAqua suggests changing the title from gray to grey but retaining gray in the article content.  The least we can do is maintain consistency within an article.  Mixing gray and grey in the same article is a bit much, even if that's what Grey does. RS in the US rarely use grey, by the way. The argument that using grey instead of gray is not a change in English variant is weak at best. --В²C ☎ 00:06, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Both terms are used here. See American English book ngrams. Yes the spelling grey is about 20% as often in the most recent book but it still is used here. If book searches aren't enough there is plenty of other evidence that both spellings are used here. Even consider the overused X11 color name list ( which has been unfortunately overused as if it was the definitive list of colors ) created as part of Project Athena at MIT here in the US used both the grey and gray spellings. The grey article has used that spelling since about 2004 and given that this article is pretty much a split off from about 2011 RETAIN seems to favor grey. To be perfectly honest the 2004 move using current guidelines probably should not have happened but that is about 10 years ago now. It probably is worth considering the arguments in the most recent move attempt of the main article was Talk::Grey which ended in no consensus. A good counter point to my argument there is the one presented by RedSlash talking about usage of the spelling gray outside of the US and as noted I do consider that a valid argument for the main page, but I think that CONSISTENCY is a strong argument for this article. PaleAqua (talk) 02:20, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Consistency doesn't trump WP:RETAIN. If we did, we wouldn't have tire and motorcycle tyre (see also this recent failed RM on the latter's talk page).  Calidum   00:55, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

“Displayed at right”
I think we should remove the “… is displayed at right”. The article should not make assumptions on the page layout; some small screens like mobile phones may display the image above or below the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okhjon (talk • contribs) 20:20, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

The sampling of grays at the top
In the info box, it shows nine shades of gray, but it only list eight connotations for each of the colors — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.78.159.34 (talk) 13:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Those connotations are not intended to lineup one for one with the nine colors in the image but are eight different connotations associated with the word gray (or grey).-- S Philbrick (Talk)  14:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Possible removal from list
Entries in List of colors: A–F contained links to this page.

The entries are :


 * Chrome aluminum
 * Dark charcoal
 * Dark gunmetal
 * Dust storm
 * Gray-blue

An entry in List of colors: N–Z contained a link to this page.

The entry is :


 * Philippine gray
 * Titanium

I don't see any evidence that this color is discussed in this article and plan to delete it from the list per this discussion: Talk:List_of_colors

If someone decides that these colors should have a section in this article and it is added, I would appreciate a ping.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  14:57, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Dark medium gray
I see that "dark medium gray" is identified as a color in the section Dark medium gray, According to the text it's the same color as dark gray, but there is no reference attached to the text making this assertion, and the source used in the color coordinate template X11_color_names nakes no reference to "dark medium gray".

I don't plan to edit this article as my current focus is on the color lists articles (e.g. List_of_colors:_A–F). I do plan to remove this entry from that list, but if someone does some research and can can find evidence that there is a color by this name, it can be restored.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  14:56, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I earlier said I don't plan to edit this article but because there is no evidence for the existence of this name as a color, I do plan to remove it from this page as well as the color list S Philbrick  (Talk)  13:33, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:02, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * India new 500 INR, MG series, 2016, obverse.jpg (discussion)
 * India new 500 INR, MG series, 2016, reverse.jpg (discussion)

Usage of space
This article doesn't use space very well. One problem is the size of the infoboxes. Are our readers really likely to be interested in all the redundant colour coordinates? Even if someone, for some reason, wants to copy an exact shade from the article, one set of coordinates should be enough, if you've got say the hexadecimal code you can easily convert it to whatever representation you need. (And most graphics programs accept the hexadecimal code anyway.)

But I don't think we should be encouraging our readers to treat these colour coordinates as gospel in the first place. The infoboxes make them seem like exact pin-pointed values, but most of them are either really poorly sourced or denote a range of values. For example, the web / X11 colours are only exact in the sense that if you specify that colour name in CSS for example, you'll always get the same colour, but the X11 colour list is itself badly sourced and often out of necessity assigns one colour to fuzzy concepts like ‘light grey’. (And I really question the utility of the X11 list and the wisdom of its inclusion in CSS3.)

And why do the infoboxes show the colours as lines on a background of off-white? That's the worst possible way to display a colour, due to the way human colour perception works. White is the worst background, because it makes us perceive the colour much darker and it makes it harder than necessary to distinguish different dark tones and a line is the worst shape because every point on a line is very close to the edge of the line and thus the background. Here, let me show you...

One area where colour coordinates might have helped is figuring out the relationship between colours. But in the article as it stands at present the content is spread out so much that even with the coordinates present, it's so hard to compare things that most readers won't bother. But we do want to make ‘colour B lies somewhere between A and C’-like relationships more apparent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 20:34, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still have the opinion that unless we are specifically talking about X11, CSS or other colors with exact or specified coordinates we should not include them at all. It leads to the incorrect assumption that color terms are exact colors. The is also the tendency in many of the articles to treat a single color wheel as sacrosanct and that all major degree marks have a precise color. Instead of showing some RGB color, I'd rather see the boxes show a collection of objects that represent the color or at worse a sample of different versions of the color as that gives a better feel to our readers than a single bar of color. Alas tilting this windmill is what mostly burnt me out of wikipedia. Pale Aqua (talk) 21:05, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I think we broadly share the same opinion where colour coordinates are concerned then. And I think you may have just convinced me that just showing a flat-coloured rectangle without context is wrong. When we ask the question ‘what good do these infoboxes do?’ what would be the answer? Do they add anything of value that couldn't be provided better my a couple of photographs? Maybe all of them just need to go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 21:30, 28 May 2022 (UTC) The infoboxes are a product of WikiProject Color and its main intent is to provide color coordinates and additional information. They could be made more compact though. For example, the one on the right takes half the vertical space. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 16:13, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Gainsboro
Sinclair paints has gone belly up so we may never know for sure, but could the paint have been named after Hotel Roanoke in Gainsboro? If you, dear reader, worked for Sinclair at the time or if you otherwise have some information on the subject that can help shed light on the mystery, please leave a note. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 14:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Or the paint could be named after Gainsboro limestone, which used to come from Gainesboro, Tennessee before he quarry there was taken over by Roger's Group to be mined for road construction crushed aggregate material.

But on my search, which among other things involved clicking through all Google books results, it has become clear to me that ‘gainsboro’ isn't used as a colour term in regular English. The only occurrences I've found where it referred to a colour, were either uncritical collections of all colour names the author could find, or more often uses in a technical context where the X11 name was used for example because it was a text on web development. And if a woman is said to be wearing a Gainsboro hat, she's wearing a Gainsborough hat, not a grey hat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 10:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I see this thread over at paint talk which suggests that Sinclair are now owned by PPG Paints. I don't see a Gainsboro grey in their PPG's current list. Even among PPG Paints grays are a bunch of terms such as "Shaded Whisper" and "Afraid of the Dark", "On The Edge" that while adding a bit of whimsy to a their paint colors are not color terms in common English usage. The X11 RGB lists just happened to preserve some such names and RGB interpretations of them as if trapped in amber. Pale Aqua (talk) 15:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I remember reading somewhere that Sinclair got in trouble, was acquired by another company and that that company in turn went chapter 11 in the 90s. I don't think much of the ghost of the Sinclair company remains in PPG Paints, who I guess were mostly interested in the brand.