cemant

Cemant (pronouced sə’mænt) is an 18-color palette for use with terminals, text editors, and minimalistic desktop environments.

It is inspired by the light gray that was once (still is?) so popular in GUIs (a few other gray palettes linked below) and utilises a lowish-contrast set of accompanying colors to round out the palette. Hues and values were calculated over the CIELAB color space with the aid of the golden ratio to add some Reason, even if the calculations would have no other scientific or ergonomic basis.

palette

let λ = 0.618 over 100, χ = 0.618 over 128

name	rgb	RGB	l	L	a	b
bg, fg	b9bdc5	36383f	76.4: 2λ2	23.6: λ3	0	-4.4: -χ7
dark	16161d	575a61	eigengrau	38.2: λ2	0	-4.4: -χ7
red	a32c2d	cf554d	38.2: λ2	52.8: λ2+λ4	48.9: χ2	30.2: χ3
green	4b7d08	72a336	47.2: 2λ3	61.8: λ	-30.2: -χ3	48.9: χ2
yellow	916814	ba8d3b	47.2: 2λ3	61.8: λ	11.5: χ5	48.9: χ2
blue	3c56aa	667ad3	38.2: λ2	52.8: λ2+λ4	11.5: χ5	-48.9: -χ2
magenta	91328c	ba59b3	38.2: λ2	52.8: λ2+λ4	48.9: χ2	-30.2: -χ3
cyan	237e6f	4ea494	47.2: 2λ3	61.8: λ	-30.2: -χ3	0
light	92959d	d2d6de	61.8: λ	85.4: λ+λ3	0	-4.4: -χ7

φ over cielab

screenshot

miscellaneous

• firefox theme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cemant/

goals

• target the average coder/admin who uses a standard modern display
• prefer less long-term fatigue over pizzazz
• be colorimetrically and mathematically graceful
• feel “default” and “correct”

list of some other gray color schemes

• anti-zenburn: https://github.com/m00natic/anti-zenburn-theme
• morning: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/colors/morning.vim
• nextstep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_desktop.png
• seoul256: https://github.com/junegunn/seoul256.vim
• solaris cde: http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html
• windows 3.1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#/media/File:Windows_3.11_workspace.png
• windows 95: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#/media/File:Windows_95_at_first_run.png
• xerox star: http://toastytech.com/guis/starbitmap2.gif