Emacs: doric-themes version 0.6.0

2026-01-17

These are my minimalist themes. They use few colours and will appear mostly monochromatic in many contexts. Styles involve the careful use of typography, such as italics and bold italics.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the release notes.

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Version 0.6.0 on 2026-01-17

This version adds support for more packages, while it revises some of the faces that were already covered.

Enhanced completion interface

The minibuffer prompt used by the command doric-themes-select now groups themes by their light or dark type. The current theme is at the top.

Avy highlights are easier to spot

The highlights generated by the various commands of the avy package now have a slightly more intense background+foreground colour combination. It should be easier to spot and to differentiate from other highlights such as that of hl-line-mode and the mouse hover effect over links.

Support for all the tmr faces

My tmr package styles timers in its grid/tabulated interface as well as on the mode line. All these now get colours that come directly from the active Doric theme. Before, the colours were defined only in the tmr source code: they were “okay” (because they are based on my modus-themes) but not stylistically optimal.

Support for ruler-mode

The built-in ruler-mode draws a ruler at the top of the current buffer. All of its faces now use appropriate colours.

Trailing spaces have a more refined colour

All packages that have a face that is about highlighting trailing spaces now get a red colour value that is more appropriate for each Doric theme.

SHR buffers can use proportionately spaced fonts

I removed an override for the built-in shr-text face, which was making the nov package display its buffers in a monospaced font.

Thanks to Marcus Kammer for telling that nov-mode buffers were not proportionately spaced by default. This was done in issue 23: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes/issues/23.