[THEMES] Matugen Theme Improvments - Ghostty, GTK, QT, etc.

[bbedward]

Too many issues about colors not being right, etc. So I just want to make a meta issue.

• Ghostty+kitty Improvements
  • Done Created a custom py script (standard lib only) that maps some matugen colors into 16 colors, looks good to me.
  • Ghostty can be themed with a 16-color palette, plus some extras for cursor color and background colors. Some are easy enough to theme, but in general it's tough to figure out the material mapping from matugen since it's not really designed for such use cases.
  • Consider exploring different schems matugen has and seeing if 16 different contrasty colors can be gotten that way for light and dark mode ( scheme-content, scheme-expressive, scheme-fidelity, scheme-fruit-salad, scheme-monochrome, scheme-neutral, scheme-rainbow, scheme-tonal-spot)
  • Ghostty can also be styled with CSS, which may be the way - but need a template that honors the existing config values like its window transparency settings and things, they may be exposed as scss vars.
• GTK3 Improvements
  • Seems pretty decent but some users report issues
  • Figure out if theres a feasible way to make it independent of a specific theme, right now it depends on Colloid specifically.
• QT Improvements
• Seems pretty decent to me but requires the qt6ct-kde fork, in general it's kinda ugly but might just be QT

[Vantesh]

Suggestions:

Terminal: Use Wallust for a 16-color palette.

GTK: Instead of Colloid, consider adw-gtk3, which works well with the default Matugen template.

Alternative approach: Skip full theming and provide a script exposing $is_light. Users could then integrate this into their own configs or Matugen setups, which many already have.

[bbedward]

Suggestions:

Terminal: Use Wallust for a 16-color palette.

I'd prefer not to require an extra dependency, but for just Ghostty maybe it's fine to use it if its available over matugen. Pretty sure matugen just cant do it

GTK: Instead of Colloid, consider adw-gtk3, which works well with the default Matugen template.

I was unsuccessful just dumping the default template into ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css or the like. GTK4 worked better, but that's basically what it does now (gtk4 not dependent on any specific theme)

Alternative approach: Skip full theming and provide a script exposing $is_light. Users could then integrate this into their own configs or Matugen setups, which many already have.

The full theming generates the colors but shouldnt interfere unless explicitly configured by the user, so it creates ~/.config/gtk-3.0/dank-colors.css - but they wont get symlink'd to gtk.css unless pressing the button in settings. Ditto for the others like Ghostty, just require some user config to use the generated colors.

the current mode can be gotten with IPC though, qs -c dms ipc call theme getMode

[bbedward]

I made a custom py script to get b16 colors for ghostty, and it seems to be pretty decent now, still needs work though

but i'll await other opinions

[Vantesh]

I made a custom py script to get b16 colors for ghostty, and it seems to be pretty decent now, still needs work though

but i'll await other opinions

This is nice, is it possible to integrate it into kitty?

[bbedward]

@Vantesh added kitty and updated readme that its supported

echo "include dank-theme.conf" >> ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

seems to be a perfect mapping of the ghostty logic, so any tweaks to the b16 logic would work for both.

[bbedward]

Made more updates, I'm pretty happy with the terminal theme now.

ghostty + kitty, was not happy with wallust output.

[Vantesh]

Currently the permissions and username are unreadable (eza command) on light mode when generating theme with dank16. It doesnt change those colors on any scheme - I think it's something to do with LS_COLORS

wallust applies the colors.

[bbedward]

@Vantesh I tweaked the yellow and green pallettes of d16 see if that works better.

There are some guidelines for ansi palettes like - you have a black/red/blue/green/cyan/magenta - lighter and darker variations of each. I deviate from it in the cyan/blue/magenta palettes to keep colors closer to the primary theme, but prefer to keep the red/green/yellow|orange distinct since, it makes error/warn/debug logs distinct which I like - if the log output uses ansi colors.