Protesilaos Stavrou

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Modus themes 2.3.0 for GNU Emacs

I just published version 2.3.0 of the Modus themes. The release notes are reproduced below. For any questions, feel welcome to contact me.

I will now prepare the patch for emacs.git which will then trickle down to GNU ELPA (the modus-themes is a :core package). Thank you for your patience!

Modus themes version 2.3.0

By Protesilaos Stavrou info@protesilaos.com on 2022-04-01

This entry documents the changes made to the project since the publication of version 2.2.0 on 2022-02-23. It spans more than 70 commits.

To access the URL of the manual visit: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes. Or read it in the Emacs Info reader by evaluating:

(info "(modus-themes) Top")

The modus-operandi and modus-vivendi themes are built into Emacs-28 (next stable release) or later, and are available on GNU ELPA as well as other archives. Emacs-28 ships version 1.6.0, while the current master branch (i.e. Emacs-29) and, by extension, GNU ELPA include the latest tagged release.

Customisation options

  • The modus-themes-completions now accepts a text-also property for the selection key. This has the effect of colourising the current line’s text. Whereas the default does not change the text colour, re-using whatever underlying colours are available. Consult the doc string of this user option, as it provides for fine-grained control of how completion UIs may look. Thanks to Morgan Willcock whose feedback in issue 278 inspired me to add the text-also property: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/278.

  • The modus-themes-box-buttons now accepts an all-buttons property. It applies whatever other style is used for the boxed buttons to the generic widget.el. By default, the faces of widget.el do not look like graphical buttons: they have a bold weight and a foreground colour instead. Examples where those are used are the Notmuch “hello” buffer and the main view of the elfeed-summary package. Thanks to Daniel Mendler, Rudolf AdamkoviÄŤ, and Tony Zorman for their feedback in issue 296: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/296.

  • The modus-themes-intense-mouseovers is a boolean user option which makes mouse hover effects more intense when set to a non-nil value. By default, mouseovers use a cyan background value. This changes it to a more prominent blue. Thanks to John Haman for the feedback in issue 290: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/290.

  • The user options modus-themes-box-buttons, modus-themes-mode-line, modus-themes-org-agenda, and modus-themes-headings can now read a number value as a cons cell. The old method of a plain number continues to work. This makes it possible to be more descriptive on what a given value signifies. Each doc string describes the technicalities. Here are samples that yield identical results:

    (setq modus-themes-mode-line '(accented 0.9 borderless 2))
(setq modus-themes-mode-line '(accented (heigh 0.9) borderless (padding 2)))

    Thanks to Daniel Mendler for proposing this idea in issue 282: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/282#note_842257619

Attempted bug fix for byte compiled files

Quoting from the git log:

commit f067d2ef39c22174b95584f2cba7942aaf03bcca
Author: Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com>
Date:   Thu Mar 3 06:52:31 2022 +0200

    Reify themes with eval-and-compile

    This is an attempt to fix a bug that has existed since version 1.2.0 of
    the themes or even earlier.

    The bug is about a mismatch between compiled code and runtime
    dependencies.  The runtime expects the current version while the
    compiled code only furnishes an outdated one, thus resulting in an
    error.  This only happens when:

    1. Private functions change to accept more/fewer arguments.
    2. Variables change their acceptable value (e.g. from symbol to list).
    3. The user is installing the package via the package.el mechanism which
       takes care of byte compilation (though anything that mimics
       package.el should exhibit the same behaviour).

    My understanding is that the cause was the limited scope of the
    'eval-and-compile' we had before: it would run the 'require' also at
    compile time, whereas the 'modus-themes-theme' macro, which reifies the
    actual theme, would only be evaluated at runtime.  Hence the mismatch as
    'require' would read the already installed byte code while the macro
    would expect newer forms.

    Wrapping everything in the 'eval-and-compile' should address this
    problem.  Hopefully it will not engender new ones...

    * * *

    The latest reports about this bug:

    * GitLab issue 287 with Mark Bestley and Daniel Mendler:
      <https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/287>.

    * GitHub issue 22 with Rytis Paškauskas:
      <https://github.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/issues/22>.

 doc/modus-themes.info   | 30 +++++++++++++++---------------
 doc/modus-themes.org    | 15 ++++++++-------
 modus-operandi-theme.el | 10 +++++-----
 modus-vivendi-theme.el  | 10 +++++-----
 4 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 32 deletions(-)

After nearly one month, no problem has been observed as a result of this change.

Newly supported packages

These are added to the already comprehensive coverage we guarantee.

Directly supported:

Indirectly supported (they use faces that we already cover):

  • elfeed-summary
  • undo-hl

Changes to supported faces or packages

  • Improved the colours used by avy to always guarantee constrast in hueness between side-by-side characters with a variety of user settings. I tried various styles, such as:

    (setq avy-style 'pre)
(setq avy-style 'at-full)

    For the sake of completeness, I also ran tests by modifying the avy-lead-faces (which is a defconst, not a defcustom):

    (setq avy-lead-faces
      '(avy-lead-face
        avy-lead-face-0
        avy-lead-face-2
        avy-lead-face
        avy-lead-face-0
        avy-lead-face-2))

(setq avy-lead-faces
      '(avy-lead-face
        avy-lead-face-1
        avy-lead-face-1
        avy-lead-face-1
        avy-lead-face-1))

(setq avy-lead-faces
      '(avy-lead-face
        avy-lead-face-2
        avy-lead-face-2
        avy-lead-face-2
        avy-lead-face-2))

  • Updated the vertico-quick faces to keep them aligned with the new Avy styles. Thanks to Daniel Mendler (Vertico’s developer) for the reminder: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/commit/404a9658196debdde95a51148fc62c5b2faccfb9#note_856454659.

  • Applied warmer though still not saturated colours for Org clocking overlays. The previous style could be mistaken for a mouse highlight or the highlighted line if modus-themes-hl-line included the properties intense and accented. Thanks to Rudolf AdamkoviÄŤ for the feedback in issue 293: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/293.

  • Broadened coverage of the built-in shr.el library to include the new shr-code face (Emacs 29).

  • Expanded support for the embark package by covering its new embark-collect-marked face. Thanks to Daniel Mendler for the feedback in issue 299: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/299.

  • Made the fill-column-indicator a contiguous line. It was a dashed line before, per the Emacs defaults, which led to awkward results depending on the font family and value of line-spacing. Thanks to Daniel Mendler for the feedback in issue 297: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/297.

  • Added explicit support for the built-in separator-line face in order to refine its presentation. This is present in M-x shortdoc buffers (Emacs 28). Thanks to Daniel Mendler for the feedback in issue 297: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/297.

  • Applied explicit styling to the generic underline face in order to ensure its consistent colouration. The problem before was that an underline that spanned text with distinct colours would inherit the colour of the affected character. A uniform presentation makes everything easier to read.

  • The ement.el Matrix client now uses a subtle background for username mentions and/or quoted text. This is consistent with how other Matrix clients style such constructs. Thanks to Adam Porter (aka “alphapapa”), the developer of ement.el, for explaining the technicalities and providing the relevant feedback in issue 25 over at the GitHub mirror: https://github.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/issues/25.

  • Enforced consistency between icomplete and ido. The first match was coloured differently in ido-mode by mistake. Thanks to Morgan Willcock for the feedback in issue 278: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/278.

  • Used the main foreground for Company’s tooltip. This is how it should have been. Corfu is designed that way as well. Thanks to user okamsn for the feedback in issue 278: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/278.

  • Corrected an omission whereby the AUCTeX verbatim face was not consistent with other such faces. Now it too is governed by the user option modus-themes-markup.

  • Fixed the centaur-tabs invalid background message. Thanks to Lennart C. Karssen for reporting the bug in issue 288: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/288. Note, however, that the problem is due to some decisions made upstream. My patch has not been merged yet (open since 2022-02-24): https://github.com/ema2159/centaur-tabs/pull/179. Given this opportunity, always anticipate that faces may :inherit from others and thus functions like face-background might return an undesirable nil value if used without a fallback.

Miscellaneous

  • Made the modus-themes--current-theme return the first Modus theme instead of the car of custom-enabled-themes. This makes the themes work at all times even when the user has multiple of them enabled. Thanks to Pierre TĂ©choueyres for the patch, which was sent via email with regard to Emacs bug#54598: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=54598.

  • Implemented compile-time requirement for built-in libraries to be sure that the themes work in all cases. Thanks to Antonio Hernández Blas for reporting in issue 292 the bug with the old design that assumed the cl-lib and subr-x as already loaded: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/issues/292.

  • Wrote in the manual how to achieve a monochrome style (with permutations) for code syntax highlighting. Thanks to Augusto Stoffel for sharing the idea via an email exchange (this information is divulged with permission).

  • Clarified some statements in the manual’s section about the nuances in “enabling” and “loading” a theme.

  • Documented how the applicable palette affects the outer boundaries of the colour range that terminal emulators set when Emacs is ran without a GUI. Here “the palette” refers to the relevant 16 ANSI escape sequences (terminal colours 0 through 15). For the sake of convenience, the node includes ready-to-use palettes for XTerm, which can be adapted to other terminal emulators. This entry complements an existing one on improving the colour accuracy in terminal emulators.

  • Used American English constructions in a few places such as “color” instead of “colour” as that is what core Emacs expects (and the themes are part of emacs.git).

  • Updated the description of the themes to be more user-friendly. Instead of “Highly accessible themes (WCAG AAA)” we now have “Elegant, highly legible and customizable themes”. Nothing changes in terms of substance. Thanks to Jorge Morais for the feedback.

  • Clarified that the version of the themes which is built into Emacs does not use require. It is in response to this thread: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2022-03/msg00049.html. Thanks to Philip Kaludercic for bringing the issue to my attention.

  • Improved the code samples that show how to set up the package.

  • Wrote the correct symbols for some obsoletion forms.

Thanks once again to everyone involved!

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