[tex-live] ICC profiles for PDF/A compliance

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2018-09-09 at 11:02:51 +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

 > ne 9. 9. 2018 v 1:02 odesílatel Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>
 > napsal:
 > 
 > ...
 > 
 >     So if we don't find an ICC sRGB profile with an appropriate
 >     license we can create one ourselves with a license which makes
 >     everybody happy.  All we need is a specification of the .icc
 >     binary format.
 > 
 > Little CMS (LCMS) is a free OpenSource tool, information on the
 > .icc format can probably be found there and the specification is
 > hopefully freely available.

I found the specification at color.org.  But it's quite complex and
requires a lot of knowlege about colorimetry.

I also found some very useful programs at color.org.  Two of them are
very interesting: iccToXml and iccFromXml.  Since ICC profiles are
binary files, the most reasonable way to create them is write a
program in C, as assumed by the specification.  Everything is easier
with an XML file as a starting point.

The C sources of these tools are based on autoconf and compiling the
programs was quite easy on Linux.

It's very nice to be able to convert binary files to XML and vice versa. 

On my Raspberry I just installed the Debian icc-profiles-free package
and now there is a file

  /usr/share/color/icc/ghostscript/srgb.icc

If Debian considers ghostscript/srgb.icc as free, isn't it free enough
for TeX Live as well?  The file contains

  "Copyright Artifex Software 2011"

Is this license appropriate for TeX Live?  I think so because
otherwise neither Debian nor TeX Live can provide Ghostscript.

Debian also provides a file

   /usr/share/color/icc/sRGB.icc

which obviously comes from LCMS and contains

  "no copyright, use freely"

Nicely said.  Sounds like "public domain" at a first glance.  But who
is the author and where does the stuff come from?

After all, I think that if all GNU/Linux distributions already provide
Ghostscript, there is no obvious reason not to ship a file which is
part of it with the pdfx package.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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