possibly add parameter parsing to string names, like `cubehelix(1.5, 1.2, 1.0)`

[tlambert03]

[anntzer]

Another useful application would be something like black_to_("colorname"), generalizing the cmap:blue/cyan/green/... colormaps (linear interpolation from black to whatever).

[alisterburt]

great to see this already discussed @anntzer and @tlambert03

I was playing with adding inigo quilez's colormap for signed distance functions

After some discussion with @tlambert03 we came to

• sometimes colormaps are functions of more than just scalar values (e.g. cubehelix)
• this is generally handled by Colormap(x: Callable)
• there is no way to expose these functions in the catalog by name

The API we landed on for providing colormap functions in the catalog is

cm = Colormap(x: str, cmap_kwargs: dict | None = None)
# x maps to the function name, `cmap_kwargs` are kwargs for that function

will add support for this for cubehelix as an example

note: should raise if x doesn't map to a function