CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing a colour scheme

Glad to hear you've made a colour scheme to use with MATLAB Schemer! Thanks for sharing this with us.

Please only add one colour scheme per pull request. If you have multiple colorschemes to add, make a pull request for each of them.

The Schemer README includes some advice on creating a colour scheme, which you might find useful.

It is preferable to include a screenshot demonstrating an example of your new MATLAB theme. To make your screenshot:

• Load your color scheme schemer_import('yourscheme.prf', 1)
• Exit MATLAB exit();
• Reopen MATLAB
• Open the matlab-schemer/develop/sample.m file and take a screenshot with your favourite screenshot program.
• If not done at capture time, crop the screenshot down to the right size with your favourite image editor.
• Make sure the screenshot is saved in matlab-schemes/screenshots as yourscheme.png.

If you are on Linux, you can follow the method below to create your screenshot, which is mostly automated and produces the same output every time.

Reproducible screenshot workflow for Linux

Here is minimal-interaction workflow for Linux users, which will create the same screenshots every time. This has been tested on Ubuntu 15.10 with MATLAB 2016a, but should work on any *nix OS and any MATLAB version since R2012b (which introduced the toolstrip UI).

The code blocks must be run from the system shell, not at the MATLAB command prompt.

1. Setup

   Define these variables appropriately.

   # Set this variable appropriately, without extension
   SCHEME_NAME='yourschemename'
   # Set the path to your copy of MATLAB Schemer
   PATH_TO_SCHEMER='../matlab-schemer/'

2. Load scheme

   Run this code block to load the scheme, restart MATLAB, and edit sample.m.

   # Remove extension, if present
   SCHEME_NAME=${SCHEME_NAME%.prf}
   echo "Making screenshot for scheme $SCHEME_NAME";
   # Load the template and restart matlab
   matlab -r "addpath(genpath('$PATH_TO_SCHEMER')); schemer_import('$SCHEME_NAME.prf',1); exit;";
   # Edit the sample.m file
   matlab -r "edit(fullfile('$PATH_TO_SCHEMER','develop','sample.m'))" &
   # What next
   echo "Now undock sample.m, and highlight middle scaleFactor";

3. Undock sample.m editor

   Either

   • in MATLAB GUI, undock sample.m only

   Or

   • in MATLAB GUI, undock the Editor panel
   • move tabs to bottom, if more than one file is being editted

   Also, make sure the MATLAB toolstrip is visible on the undocked panel. If it is minimised, right-click on the toolstrip and restore it.

4. Highlight

   Highlight the middle instance of scaleFactor (on line 18).

5. Resize window and take screenshot

   Run this code block to resize the editor window and take a screenshot, cropped with ImageMagick.

   The crop location is correct for MATLAB 2016a.

   # Check for a window for the develop/sample.m file
   if wmctrl -l | grep -q develop/sample.m
   then
       WINDOW_NAME='develop/sample.m';
   else
       # If it's not there, use the Editor window
       WINDOW_NAME='Editor';
   fi
   if wmctrl -l | grep -qv "$WINDOW_NAME"
   then
       echo "Window $WINDOW_NAME is absent";
   else
       # Resize the window
       wmctrl -r "$WINDOW_NAME" -e 0,100,100,700,650;
       # Try getting screenshot with Imagemagick, and cropping it down to the
       # just the relevant section
       wmctrl -a "$WINDOW_NAME"; sleep 0.1; import -window root -crop 700x379+100+249 +repage "${SCHEME_NAME}.png";
       # Inspect the result
       xdg-open "${SCHEME_NAME}.png";
       # Is it cropped correctly?
       echo "How does it look? If no good, try one of the other options to manually crop";
   fi

6. If screenshot cropped incorrectly, manually crop screenshot

   If the ImageMagick crop is not aligned correctly,

   • Either use gnome-screenshot for the whole window, and then crop in GIMP

     wmctrl -a "$WINDOW_NAME" \
         && gnome-screenshot -w -f "$SCHEME_NAME.png" \
         && gimp "$SCHEME_NAME.png";

   • Or use gnome-screenshot to select the area to use (which is likely to be less precise).

     wmctrl -a "$WINDOW_NAME" && gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCHEME_NAME.png";

7. When you are happy, move the final copy into the screenshots folder

   mv "$SCHEME_NAME.png" screenshots/"$SCHEME_NAME.png";

Incorporating into MATLAB Schemer

Once you've added the new scheme to this repository, it will be merged into MATLAB Schemer using git-subtree. If you are merging it into Schemer yourself, please consult this step-by-step guide.