Date   : Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:30:48 -0500
From   : jules.richardson99@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Programming: Colour names in Sigsumeidsi

J.G.Harston wrote:
> J.G.Harston wrote:
>> Jules Richardson wrote:
>>> Storage is cheap - with a constraint placed on simplicity of the algorithm
>>> rather than performance, how about a monster[1] lookup table? :-)
>>> [1] anyone care to work out how monster?
>> 20 characters per name, 256*256*256 names, &14000000 bytes of storage.
>> Only 5120M ;)
> 
> D'oh! 320M ! (20*16 not 20*256 - miscounted the zeros)

I was thinking that each entry for the 2^24 possible RGB combinations would be 
a list of possible Sigsumeidsi names - of which there must be quite a few. I 
think what you're proposing is to *only* store the shortest name for a given 
RGB triple?

Mind you, Alex says: "The other method used is to define the color directly 
using a number in the range &0-&FF", which presumably means that the shortest 
legal Sigsumeidsi colour name takes up just three bytes, and has a direct 
mapping to RGB colour space? If that's the case then doesn't a convertor 
between RGB and the shortest Sigsumeidsi name simply return its input?

cheers

Jules