YYCS

Yin-Yang Color Scheme

Abstract

YYCS (Yin-Yang Color Scheme) is a simple, effective and flexible meta color scheme, designed by Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall. It can be used to generate particular color schemes for use in applications, websites, diagrams, etc.

YYCS supports 2 to 8 base colors as its input and provides 5 to 5x2xN colors (N: number of lighter/darker color spreads) as its output.

YYCS is based on the following foundational rules:

1. Triad Coloring: The color scheme is based on three optical colorings:
   • a primary "reg(ular)" coloring, used about 75% of all times,
   • a secondary "acc(ent)" coloring, used about 20% of all times, and
   • a tertiary "sig(nal)" coloring, used about 5% of all times.

2, Coloring Spread: The color scheme provides for each of the three colorings 1 or an arbitrary odd number of pairs of foreground/background colors.

1. Minimalistic Specification: The color scheme can be unambiguously specified with a minimum amount of input information.

2. Pairing Rule: The color scheme input specification consists of:

   • 2 primary background/foreground color pairs ("reg-bg" / "reg-fg" and "acc-bg" / "acc-fg"),
   • 1 secondary background/foreground color pair ("sig-bg" / "sig-fg"), and
   • 2 tertiary cross-derived foreground colors ("axr-fg" and "sxr-fg")

3. Spread Rule: the color scheme's 8 base colors

License

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall (http://engelschall.com/)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.