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# MEP21: color and cm refactor

- Status
- Branches and Pull requests
- Abstract
- Detailed description
- Implementation
- Backward compatibility
- Alternatives

## Status

- Discussion: This MEP has not commenced yet, but here are some ongoing ideas which may become a part of this MEP:

## Branches and Pull requests

## Abstract

- color
  - tidy up the namespace
  - Define a “Color” class
  - make it easy to convert from one color type to another ``hex -> RGB``, ``RGB -> hex``, ``HSV -> RGB`` etc.
  - improve the construction of a colormap - the dictionary approach is archaic and overly complex (though incredibly powerful)
  - make it possible to interpolate between two or more color types in different modes, especially useful for construction of colormaps in HSV space for instance
- cm
  - rename the module to something more descriptive - mappables?

Overall, there are a lot of improvements that can be made with matplotlib color handling - managing backwards compatibility will be difficult as there are some badly named variables/modules which really shouldn’t exist - but a clear path and message for migration should be available, with a large amount of focus on this in the API changes documentation.

## Detailed description

## Implementation

## Backward compatibility

## Alternatives