[Question] base24 fallback colors

[loiccoyle]

Quick question, when building a base24 compatible template, the base24 specific colors are not filled in when using base16 schemes. I was assuming that it would use the fallback color map described in https://github.com/tinted-theming/base24/blob/main/styling.md#base24-fallbacks. Also the table at https://github.com/tinted-theming/base24?tab=readme-ov-file#base24-compatibility indicates that is should be compatible and work.

I guess it depends how you define compatible, but I don't think having missing colors is what I would consider as compatible.

Is there any reason not to use the fallback colors when using a base16 scheme with a base24 template?

[JamyGolden]

There isn't any good reason we don't do this now, just haven't gotten round to talking about it yet. I'll look into getting this added to the builder specification.

[loiccoyle]

Understood. Follow up semi-related question, the base24 spec calls for base10 and base11 to generally be darker than base00, does this hold for light themes too? or should base10 and base11 be lighter for light themes?

[JamyGolden]

10 and 11 should be lighter for light themes.

I personally feel like 10 and 11 are questionable since the styling spec doesn’t mention what they should be used for and they’re darker (or lighter in light themes) than base 00 which is mostly very dark already and whenever I’ve created base24 themes, I haven’t used 10 or 11.

[loiccoyle]

Ok, I guess then the other base24 colors should generally be darkened instead of brightened in light themes?

[JamyGolden]

Yeah so light is reversed. The gradient from base00 to base07 is very light (base00) to darkest (base07), whilst color usage remains the same, eg base05 will still be foreground and base00 background.

[loiccoyle]

So just to confirm, for light schemes base12 should generally be a "dark red" (instead of "bright red" for dark schemes) same for the base13-17 colors?

[JamyGolden]

Ah I didn't realise you were asking about those colors. No those stay the same, standard for base08 - base0F and "bright" variants for base12+

[loiccoyle]

Ok thanks for clarifying, I'm asking because I've been playing around with "porting" base16 schemes to base24 and had to understand how to construct the base10+ colors. I'm just darkening/brightening the fallback colors to construct the base10+ colors, and it seems to work reasonably well. See the preview (the last row are the base24 specific colors).

I'm just experimenting and am not sure where I'm going with this, but perhaps there could be an option in builders to "port" a base16 scheme when it is used in a base24 template. Which would require, for example, darkening/brightening the fallback colors, instead of just duplicating the fallback colors.

My motivation for this is that I find the extra colors of base24 useful, especially for code editors (neovim in my case), but the current base24 schemes are missing a lot of the popular schemes (gruvbox, solarized, ...).

[JamyGolden]

Nice work you're doing! Totally, I think this is a good idea to add to the builder spec. I'll look into adding it to tinted-builder-rust and then create a spec based on a PR I'll create here, then if there are any change requests to the spec I'll adjust the PR and merge both at the same time.

[loiccoyle]

Great, I look forward to it. Feel free to close this issue.