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<p>While iterating on my <a href="https://protesilaos.com/tempus-themes/">Tempus themes</a> project of
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accessible colour schemes for terminal emulators and text editors,
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I started conducting experiments for mixing colours. The goal is to
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derive a median value from two others. A couple of variants of red
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would produce a third one in between them. Same with two greens,
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yellows, and so on for all basic sixteen colours that constitute each
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theme’s palette.</p>
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<h2>Scripting things with Bash</h2>
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<p>Part of my experimentation was trying to figure out a way to do things
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using the shell. And I have found a way, only it is not
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straightforward…</p>
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<p>To start with, to derive the median colour from two others, we follow
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this formula:</p>
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<pre><code>blend = ( (R1 + R2) / 2 ) ( (G1 + G2) / 2 ) ( (B1 + B2) / 2 )
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</code></pre>
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<p>This assumes that the colour is defined in RGB, i.e as a mixture of red,
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green, and blue channels. <em>But what if we have been using hexadecimal
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notation?</em> A HEX colour might include letters, whereas an RGB one will
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always be described with integers.</p>
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<p>While there probably is a way to do arithmetic with base16 notation,
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I could not figure it out. As such, I settled on the roundabout way of
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converting HEX to RGB, doing the arithmetic, and then turning the
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blended colour into HEX.</p>
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<p>To rebase a HEX to RGB (base16 to base10), we need to know how to break
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it up into its constituent red, green, blue channels. So a hexadecimal
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value such as <code>202427</code> would be abstracted to <code>20 (red channel)</code>, <code>24
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(green channel)</code> <code>27 (blue channel)</code>. Doing that in the shell:</p>
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<pre><code>#!/bin/bash
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col0=202427 # black variant
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echo "${col0:0:2}" # prints first pair of characters (red)
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echo "${col0:2:2}" # prints second pair of characters (green)
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echo "${col0:4:2}" # prints third pair of characters (blue)
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</code></pre>
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<p>This gives us:</p>
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<pre><code>20
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24
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27
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</code></pre>
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<p>Now we need to convert each channel to decimal notation, which is what
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is used for RGB. Instead of doing the mathematics, we can use the
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<code>printf</code> built-in mechanism for converting base16 to base10. This is
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done with the <code>%d</code> specifier. To denote the presence of a hexadecimal
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number, we prepend <code>0x</code>. More concretely, we use the substring
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extraction we saw earlier to operate on each of the colour’s three
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channels:</p>
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<pre><code>printf "%d,%d,%d" 0x${col0:0:2} 0x${col0:2:2} 0x${col0:4:2}
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</code></pre>
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<p>This command takes <code>0x20</code>, <code>0x24</code>, <code>0x27</code> in sequence and prints them in
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decimal notation as R,G,B. Let us put it all together and see what we
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get, while also introducing our other shade of black:</p>
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<pre><code>col0=202427 # black variant
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col8=292b35 # bright black variant
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col0rgb=$(printf "%d,%d,%d" 0x${col0:0:2} 0x${col0:2:2} 0x${col0:4:2})
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col8rgb=$(printf "%d,%d,%d" 0x${col8:0:2} 0x${col8:2:2} 0x${col8:4:2})
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echo "$col0rgb"
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echo "$col8rgb"
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</code></pre>
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<p>Our new RGB colour is <code>32,36,39</code>. Doing the same on the bright black
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variant <code>292b35</code>, will give us <code>41,43,53</code>.</p>
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<p>Notice the presence of commas. Without them they would be not be valid
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RGB colours. However, for this particular task what we want is to
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ultimately blend the two and get a HEX out of them. No commas then:</p>
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<pre><code>col0rgbalt=$(printf "%d%d%d" 0x${col0:0:2} 0x${col0:2:2} 0x${col0:4:2})
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col8rgbalt=$(printf "%d%d%d" 0x${col8:0:2} 0x${col8:2:2} 0x${col8:4:2})
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</code></pre>
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<p>With that done, here comes the ugly part of using the formula that
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derives the median value between the two. The code we will be using
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looks like this:</p>
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<pre><code>printf "%d" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:0:2} + ${col8rgbalt:0:2}) / 2 ))"
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</code></pre>
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<p>We need to do this for each of the RGB channels. So thrice:</p>
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<pre><code>printf "%d%d%d" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:0:2} + ${col8rgbalt:0:2}) / 2 ))" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:2:2} + ${col8rgbalt:2:2}) / 2 ))" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:4:2} + ${col8rgbalt:4:2}) / 2 ))"
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col08rgb=$(printf "%d%d%d" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:0:2} + ${col8rgbalt:0:2}) / 2 ))" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:2:2} + ${col8rgbalt:2:2}) / 2 ))" "$(( (${col0rgbalt:4:2} + ${col8rgbalt:4:2}) / 2 ))")
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echo "$col08rgb"
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</code></pre>
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<p>This gives us <code>363946</code>, which in valid RGB would be <code>36,39,46</code>. As we
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can tell, it is positioned in between <code>32,36,39</code> and <code>41,43,53</code>. Great,
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almost done! Now convert that to base16, this time using the <code>%x</code>
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specifier, while omitting the <code>0x</code> notation:</p>
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<pre><code>printf "%x%x%x" ${col08rgb:0:2} ${col08rgb:2:2} ${col08rgb:4:2}
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</code></pre>
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<p>Our new colour is <code>24272e</code>, which once again is between <code>202427</code> and
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<code>282b35</code>. Perfect!</p>
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<h2>Moving forward with our newfound knowledge</h2>
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<p>The Tempus Themes use a 16 colour palette that represents the standard
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one you would find on any GNU/Linux terminal emulator. The colours are,
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in order:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white</li>
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<li>bright {black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white}</li>
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</ul>
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<p>These are denoted numerically as:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7</li>
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<li>8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15</li>
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</ul>
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<p>By creating a blend out of each regular and bright pair, we get an extra
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eight colours, bringing the total count to twenty four. <em>Should we
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commit to that path though?</em></p>
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<p>I remain undecided. Part of developing the Tempus Themes is to preserve
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a certain contrast ratio that conforms <strong>at minimum</strong> with the WCAG AA
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accessibility standard. This is the scientific guide to choosing
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colours. However, a theme is also a work of art. It needs to have
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a certain aesthetic to it, a recognisable look and feel. Deriving
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colours programmatically can detract from the appeal of the end product.
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We do not want that, as fascinating as the procedure may be.</p>
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<p>So far, the exception to this hesitation of mine is to allow
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programmatic blending only from the background values of each theme.
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Basically a third colour that is designated internally as the “dimmed”
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background.</p>
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<p>I still wish to make design decisions myself, while letting the computer
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handle the repetitive tasks.</p>
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<h2>The Tempus Themes are under active development</h2>
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<p>If you have not checked my project in a while, please have another look
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at the <a href="https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tempus-themes">main git repo</a>
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(each app-specific implementation has its own dedicated repository, see
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links in the README).</p>
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<p>The latest template I added concerns the GTK4 Source View widget.
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Basically, this means that you can use the Tempus Themes in GNOME
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Builder.</p>
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<p>Besides, these themes are also deeply incorporated in <a href="https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/dotfiles">my
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dotfiles</a>. I use them daily
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and always try to improve them further and/or port them to more
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applications (notwithstanding the comprehensive list currently on
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offer).</p>
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<p>For the sake of completeness, the colours used in the examples above,
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are <code>col0</code> and <code>col8</code> from <a href="https://protesilaos.com/tempus-winter/">Tempus Winter</a>.</p>
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