I really appreciate your enthusiasm @Gen! In this case, however, I actually plan to open a discussion about deprecating and removing the $swatch special variable, and replacing it with techniques that are are more in line with modern Bokeh. The old $swatch has a number of deficiencies:
- not configurable at all (size, shape, etc)
- has obscure syntax that is hard to document/discover
- adds complexity internally that is undesirable
Better would be to make CustomJSHover a workable option so that users can self-serve any needs they have, or else add actual formatter models for color values, that can be used in the same way that all other custom formatters work these days.
If you want to join the Bokeh dev slack we can try to chat about other possible issues based on you interests/experience.