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Contributing to the Tempus themes project

Thank you for your willingness to help!

Tempus project overview

First of all, an overview of this project's design to help you understand the workflow (and where you could do your part):

  1. The tempus-themes-generator repo is the tool that is used to build the Tempus themes. All contributions to the underlying code should be made here (more in the following sections).
  2. The Tempus Themes is the main user-facing repository. It contains all the files pertaining to the Tempus themes, as well as general information on the project as a whole.
  3. For each of the available templates there is a dedicated repository on GitLab (exceptions are generic data files, such as YAML ports). Their naming convention follows this pattern: tempus-themes-[NAME OF TEMPLATE]. For example, tempus-themes-xfce4-terminal contains files specific to the xfce4-terminal. Where appropriate, these repositories also function as the source code for GNU/Linux distro packages.

How the generator is designed

The schemes directory contains the data of each colour scheme, such as its name, description, palette, foreground and background values, etc.

The presets are complementary to the scheme files. They parse the base colours to produce more variants of them, such as converting hexadecimal colour notation to decimal. These new variables are then used in the appropriate templates.

The templates directory contains the files that parse the data. Each template file is named after the program it is intended to work with. For example, the templates/vim corresponds to a theme for Vim.

The generator itself is a shell script written in Bash. It is meant to be run with two arguments, the first being the scheme name and the second the template name. Example using the schemes/winter and templates/urxvt:

./tempus-themes-generator.sh winter urxvt

What contributions to make

Background knowledge:

  • The scheme files should always include all the data needed to build a theme. If new variables must be declared in a template, they should be defined in the schemes.
  • The colour values should always meet the colour contrast ratio that each Tempus item strives for. For most cases, that means 4.50:1 between foreground and background values (WCAG AA rating). For example, Tempus Totus has a contrast ratio of >= 7.00:1 (WCAG AAA rating). It should never fall below that.

Rules for deriving the palette:

  • Dark themes use colours 0 and 8 as base backgrounds. Colour 0 is the main background, while 8 is its alternative (used in special circumstances). Colours 0 and 8 correspond to the "black" and "bright black" variants respectively. The base foregrounds for dark themes are colours 15 and 7 ("bright white" and "white"), with the former being the main foreground while the latter is its alternative (again, used in specific circumstances).
  • Light themes are the inverse of the dark ones: bgs are 15 (main) and 7 (alt), fgs are 0 (main) and 8 (alt).
  • All remaining colours are called "accent values". These are subdivided in two groups. Colours 2-6 are the main accents while 8-14 are their bright equivalents.
  • Any accent value can be used as a background, such as colour 1 (red) for highlighting error codes, provided that its foreground colour value is either of the base background values (col0 or col8 for dark themes, col7 or col15 for light themes). This means, for instance, that the colour 15 (bright white) of a dark theme should not be used as a background colour for any other value other than colours 0 and 8. Otherwise the contrast ratio would fall below its intended target.

Improving the schemes

  • The palettes consist of 16 colours. For most cases this is enough. There are however some programs where a wider palette would be more appropriate.
  • Other ideas are welcome!

Improving the templates

  • Suggest fixes for existing themes.
  • Submit new templates.