fix: mark glasbey as qualitative - #142
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Glasbey's palette is 256 maximally distinct colors for labelling categories
(Glasbey et al., doi:10.1002/col.20327), but is recorded as a continuous
`miscellaneous` colormap. Consequences: it is interpolated between colors that
denote unrelated categories, and `Colormap("glasbey").lut(1000)` returns 1000
colors rather than the 256 that exist.
Measured, the median CIE Lab step between adjacent entries is 75.7 — within the
19.3–116.6 range spanned by the catalog's own qualitative colormaps, and nowhere
near its continuous ones (0.9 for matplotlib:viridis).
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August 7, 2026 02:32
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glasbeyis recorded as a continuousmiscellaneouscolormap, but it is a categorical palette: 256 maximally distinct colors for labelling categories, ordered so that any prefix stays distinguishable (Glasbey et al., doi:10.1002/col.20327 — "Colour displays for categorical images").Two consequences today:
Evidence, using only colormaps this catalog labels — median distance between adjacent entries:
glasbeymatplotlib:viridiscmocean:thermalChange
src/cmap/data/glasbey/record.json:category→qualitative,interpolation→false, matching howtol's discrete palettes are recorded.After:
category == "qualitative",interpolation == "nearest", andnum_colors == 256is respected.One test added in
tests/test_glasbey.py.