In Operation
pastel has a large number of subcommands. Here’s a list of them.
As you can see, there are lots to choose from. Let’s start with the pick subcommand. This lets you interactively pick a color from the screen (pipette).
Here’s a short animation showing a few more of the subcommands.
One of the main strengths of pastel is the ability to pipe the output of one subcommand into another subcommand. This helps make it a remarkably versatile tool.
Summary
pastel is a very useful tool for anyone who wants with colors. It gets our seal of approval!
There’s good help available. Issue the -h flag on any subcommand.
The developer has written many other quality open source tools including fd, hyperfine, insect, bat, and hexyl.
Website: github.com/sharkdp/pastel
Support:
Developer: David Peter
License: Apache License 2.0 or MIT License
pastel is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation / Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| AES Crypt | Encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| Cerebro | Fast application launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| CopyQ | Advanced clipboard manager |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| eza | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| Kooha | Simple screen recorder |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats |
| Imagine | A simple yet effective image optimization tool |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| Mark Text | Simple and elegant Markdown editor |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| noti | Monitors a command or process and triggers a notification |
| Nushell | Flexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel |
| nvitop | GPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Oh My Zsh | Framework to manage your Zsh configuration |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| pastel | Generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| Rnote | Sketch and take handwritten notes |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| Sticky | Simulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |
| Zellij | Terminal workspace with batteries included |
If only more open source software had good docs. It’s an area which is often neglected, probably because it’s boring to write good docs.
It’s hard for many developers to write flowingEnglish documentation if they are not native English speakers themselves. It’s certainly true for me, my English is basic at best.
I usually seek help from my user base for this activity, together with UAT.