Protesilaos Stavrou

Emacs: The Modus themes can now be extended with a 'user' palette

Starting with commit 573db12 in the modus-themes.git repository, users can now extend the palette of the active theme with their own colour definitions. This makes it easier to reuse colour values when defining overrides for palette entries (overrides allow the user to, for example, change the mapping of string from a shade of blue to a shade of green—changes apply across all faces due to how semantic entries are defined in the palette).

By default, the palette of each theme includes something like this:

;; Excerpt from `modus-operandi-palette'.
(red             "#a60000")
(red-warmer      "#972500")
(red-cooler      "#a0132f")
(red-faint       "#7f0000")
(red-intense     "#d00000")
(green           "#006800")
(green-warmer    "#316500")
(green-cooler    "#00663f")
(green-faint     "#2a5045")
(green-intense   "#008900")

As well as semantic mappings like:

;; Excerpt from `modus-operandi-palette'.
(builtin magenta-warmer)
(comment fg-dim)
(constant blue-cooler)
(docstring green-faint)
(docmarkup magenta-faint)
(fnname magenta)
(keyword magenta-cooler)
(preprocessor red-cooler)
(string blue-warmer)
(type cyan-cooler)
(variable cyan)

Instead of overriding, say, the values of existing entries like red and magenta-cooler, the user may now define their own cherry and plum colours, which can then be used as part of the palette overrides.

Add more colours per-theme

Here is how the new definitions are added to the modus-operandi theme:

;; Define two new colors in the "user" palette of `modus-operandi'.
;; Other themes will not use these.
(setq modus-operandi-palette-user
      '((cherry "#a0134f")
        (plum "#6f459a")))

Each theme provides a user option of the form THEME-NAME-palette-user, where THEME-NAME is the name of the theme, like modus-operandi-tinted or modus-vivendi-tritanopia.

[ The new colours follow the same principles as those of the core palette, so please read the relevant documentation. ]

Now that cherry and plum are known, they can be used as semantic palette overrides. Thus:

;; Use entries from `modus-operandi-palette-user' in the overrides.
(setq modus-operandi-palette-overrides
      '((cursor cherry)
        (string plum)))

The themes have lots of semantic mappings, including for programming code syntax, Org heading levels, mode lines, and more. Again, read the manual for the technicalities.

Tweaks on a per-theme basis give the user maximum flexibility. For example, they can have the above for modus-operandi while they use these for modus-vivendi:

(setq modus-vivendi-palette-user
      '((apricot "#dfb350")
        (kiwi "#80d458")))

(setq modus-vivendi-palette-overrides
      '((cursor apricot)
        (string kiwi)))

More colours common to all themes

Same principle as above, but instead of defining new colours for each theme, they are available to all themes:

(setq modus-themes-common-palette-user
      '((apricot "#dfb350")
        (cherry "#a0134f")
        (kiwi "#80d458")
        (plum "#6f459a")))

Then the user can either apply those to the “common” palette overrides or implement overrides on a per-theme basis. Since I already showed the latter, here is the former scenario:

(setq modus-themes-common-palette-overrides
      '((cursor apricot)
        (keyword cherry)
        (string kiwi)
        (comment plum)))

Note, however, that using common overrides this way runs the risk of producing inaccessible colour combinations. Indeed, those I show above are not optimal for all themes. But you get the idea of how this works.

Coming in modus-themes version 4.5.0

This feature will be widely available in the next stable release of the themes, adding to an already comprehensive framework for theming that is decidedly “Emacs-y” with all the customisations it provides.

I do not know if 4.5.0 can still make it into Emacs 30, as the branch was created a few days ago, but it will definitely be in emacs.git (now the development target for Emacs 31) as well as GNU ELPA.

About the Modus themes

Highly accessible themes, conforming with the highest standard for colour contrast between background and foreground values (WCAG AAA). They also are optimised for users with red-green or blue-yellow colour deficiency.

The themes are very customisable and provide support for a wide range of packages. Their manual is detailed so that new users can get started, while it also provides custom code for all sorts of more advanced customisations.

Since August 2020, the original Modus themes (modus-operandi, modus-vivendi) are built into Emacs version 28 or higher. Emacs 28 ships with modus-themes version 1.6.0. Emacs 29 includes version 3.0.0. Emacs 30 provides a newer, refactored version that thoroughly refashions how the themes are implemented and customized. Such major versions are not backward-compatible due to the limited resources at my disposal to support multiple versions of Emacs and of the themes across the years.

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