Pywal like templates | Questions on how to contribute to the project

[Kacper-Hanc]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When I want to create my own custom theming i always run into the issue of not having enough variance of colours with Pywal. To fix this I started to dig through the programs files and noticed that there are a lot of colours usually not used in the generated files for Pywal and this usually leads to some awkward uses of colours in the theme.

Describe the solution you'd like
The feature I want to request is template creation like in Pywal but using all the available colours fetched by Kde-material-colors-you. I've noticed that there are large formatted python strings containing what are essentially templates which are written to HOME/.local/share/color-schemes/ and would like to create my own templates without modifying the existing code manually

Describe alternatives you've considered
Another simpler solution is to just simply have more color schemes saved so that users can use them easier like what Pywal does though that seems redundant for users which wouldn't need extra color schemes

Additional context
I don't know if I'm missing something obvious as haven't been looking through the program for very long but it also seems that there is some sort of Pywal color scheme which is never used to my knowledge.

Another thing I want to make clear is that I would like to contribute to the project but as I haven't been coding or using GitHub for a long time I don't understand a couple things with the major issue being that I can't run the program in a testing environment. More specifically I have cloned the main branch to my device and I can't figure out a way to run the program. I have tried searching through other issues to see if it is mentioned anywhere on how to do this but I just simply don't understand how to do it. I do have the normal program installed via the AUR if that might be an issue.

[luisbocanegra]

When I want to create my own custom theming i always run into the issue of not having enough variance of colours with Pywal. To fix this I started to dig through the programs files and noticed that there are a lot of colours usually not used in the generated files for Pywal and this usually leads to some awkward uses of colours in the theme.

pywal accepts a dictionary containing the colors, so if we add everything there then it should be available to templates. The relevant code is here https://github.com/luisbocanegra/kde-material-you-colors/blob/main/src/kde_material_you_colors/utils/pywal_utils.py (see pywal.export.every(pywal_colors))

The feature I want to request is template creation like in Pywal but using all the available colours fetched by Kde-material-colors-you. I've noticed that there are large formatted python strings containing what are essentially templates which are written to HOME/.local/share/color-schemes/ and would like to create my own templates without modifying the existing code manually

If the above works we could move all these formatted strings to templates

I don't know if I'm missing something obvious as haven't been looking through the program for very long but it also seems that there is some sort of Pywal color scheme which is never used to my knowledge.

I pass the colors to pywal instead of having it generate them, the colors themselves come from kde-material-you-colors using materialyoucolor-python

For that to work pywal needs to be installed and enabled in the configuration file (pywal=true) it is disabled by default

Another thing I want to make clear is that I would like to contribute to the project but as I haven't been coding or using GitHub for a long time I don't understand a couple things with the major issue being that I can't run the program in a testing environment. More specifically I have cloned the main branch to my device and I can't figure out a way to run the program. I have tried searching through other issues to see if it is mentioned anywhere on how to do this but I just simply don't understand how to do it. I do have the normal program installed via the AUR if that might be an issue.

The way I usually run it is export PYTHONPATH=src/; python -m kde_material_you_colors.main inside the project directory, but that only worked if the project was previously installed, that should be fixed by 6e9449d, this method requires you to have all the dependencies (see pyproject.toml) available system-wide, it is best to install them using your package manager and avoid breaking it with something like pip.

The other and more correct way is to use a python environment and installing the project inside it, I like pipx for that but you can do it manually with python -m venv and pip if you want https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html | https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/topics/local-project-installs/

git clone https://github.com/luisbocanegra/kde-material-you-colors
cd kde-material-you-colors
pipx install .

[Kacper-Hanc]

The way I usually run it is export PYTHONPATH=src/; python -m kde_material_you_colors.main inside the project directory, but that only worked if the project was previously installed, that should be fixed by 6e9449d, this method requires you to have all the dependencies (see pyproject.toml) available system-wide, it is best to install them using your package manager and avoid breaking it with something like pip.

Thanks so much. I was able to run the project now with no issues

pywal accepts a dictionary containing the colors, so if we add everything there then it should be available to templates. The relevant code is here https://github.com/luisbocanegra/kde-material-you-colors/blob/main/src/kde_material_you_colors/utils/pywal_utils.py (see pywal.export.every(pywal_colors))

I see so my post was irrelevant I'm sorry for wasting time with that. I have looked through the code a bit more and managed to gather all the colors but has made me wonder why there is a disconnect between the Pywal colour scheme and the Kde colour scheme
In schemeconfigs.py the light scheme uses the array colors_light the dark scheme uses the array colors_dark yet the Pywal configs use different arrays like pywal_colors_light and tones_secondary some of the colours are even blended meaning there is disconnect between Kde colours and the usable Pywal colours I would love to understand why this was done

I want to thank you again for the response and sorry for wasting any time, as I've stated I want to contribute to the project but I don't know what or even if I could help still would be glad to help if possible. Thanks again

[luisbocanegra]

why there is a disconnect between the Pywal colour scheme and the Kde colour scheme
In schemeconfigs.py the light scheme uses the array colors_light the dark scheme uses the array colors_dark yet the Pywal configs use different arrays like pywal_colors_light and tones_secondary some of the colours are even blended meaning there is disconnect between Kde colours and the usable Pywal colours I would love to understand why this was done

The reason for that is variety of colors, I could have used just material roles but that doesn't have enough variety I wanted.

So instead it uses the top colors from the image, if the scoring didn't return enough colors (target is seven, plus the background) it fills the remaining ones with primary and tertiary tones and adjust everything for contrast.

In addition to that it creates the intense and faint variants:

And because I tend to prefer a fixed set of colors that is close to the standard ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code, I added the option to instead take the seven colors from the user with custom_colors_list config option, which are also adjusted and blended with the background a tiny bit

It does the job for me but I am all ears for improvements and optimizations

[Kacper-Hanc]

The reason for that is variety of colors, I could have used just material roles but that doesn't have enough variety I wanted.

I don't really understand what you mean by variety maybe I'm missing the reasoning or I my question was misleading but what I meant was that colours exported to Pywal are different to the colours given to KDE. If the colours which are supplied to Pywal need to stay I was wondering why not also export all the colours from colors_dark array as well allowing users like me to use the same colours in their templates as the colours KDE uses.
I say this because I use the Pywal templates to theme programs which do not change with the KDE colour scheme. However I understand that simply increasing the number of available colours might not be the best solution.

another thing which I believe would be beneficial is having some explanation of this either in the readme or somewhere else. To my knowledge this might be overlooked in the readme or just simply not present that the program exports colours into Pywal aswell as the variable names which can be used in the Pywal templates.

I apologize if I came across as rude in this reply and for my consistent late responses.

EDIT: Just remembered something I wanted to mention.
It would be nice if templates for Pywal could specify the directory they are to be copied to. I know that this isn't the project for this but as Pywal has been archived its impossible to ask this there. So I was wondering if that would be a good enough reason to either include a template system for the project or a different solution to Pywal.

[luisbocanegra]

The reason for that is variety of colors, I could have used just material roles but that doesn't have enough variety I wanted.

I don't really understand what you mean by variety maybe I'm missing the reasoning or I my question was misleading but what I meant was that colours exported to Pywal are different to the colours given to KDE.
If the colours which are supplied to Pywal need to stay I was wondering why not also export all the colours from colors_dark array as well allowing users like me to use the same colours in their templates as the colours KDE uses.

Like I said before pywal does allow passing additional colors in that export function I mentioned above, I didn't check if it was possible so I didn't export more than the colors in the existing templates, but it would be nice to be able to use the material colors in pywal too.

I say this because I use the Pywal templates to theme programs which do not change with the KDE colour scheme. However I understand that simply increasing the number of available colours might not be the best solution.

No, it IS the solution. Maybe my response wasn't clear enough but I was trying to explain my reasoning of how it is now and giving you pointers of what needed to be done, I wasn't rejecting your idea.

another thing which I believe would be beneficial is having some explanation of this either in the readme or somewhere else. To my knowledge this might be overlooked in the readme or just simply not present that the program exports colours into Pywal aswell as the variable names which can be used in the Pywal templates.

I did mention that the program will apply the colors to pywal, but the current wording is misleading as it doesn't apply the exact material colors nor make them available to templates... but we can fix that by exporting the material colors and then document the keys that can be used the pywal templates.

It would be nice if templates for Pywal could specify the directory they are to be copied to. I know that this isn't the project for this but as Pywal has been archived its impossible to ask this there. So I was wondering if that would be a good enough reason to either include a template system for the project or a different solution to Pywal.

There is an active fork called piwal16, IMHO its template system is fine, so I would rather use that instead of doing our own here.

[Kacper-Hanc]

Like I said before Pywal does allow passing additional colors in that export function I mentioned above, I didn't check if it was possible so I didn't export more than the colors in the existing templates, but it would be nice to be able to use the material colors in Pywal too.

before my previous response I tested and it is possible to export more colors without any issue to Pywal
schemeconfigs.py

templatefile

outputfile

This above shows me exporting almost if not all the colours from the colors_dark array on top of the other colors and then using them in the Pywal template

I did mention that the program will apply the colors to Pywal, but the current wording is misleading as it doesn't apply the exact material colors nor make them available to templates... but we can fix that by exporting the material colors and then document the keys that can be used the Pywal templates.

I agree with the above point and if I'm not wrong the above proves that

[luisbocanegra]

Nice, a suggestion I have is to use the unpacking operator, so you don't have to define each key separately: **colors_dark

[Kacper-Hanc]

I see I didn't know you could do it like that. As for the Pywal16 it appears that I have been using that instead of Pywal for the entire time and it works perfectly fine as is.