Screen shots of the Modus themes for Emacs

Demonstrating a wide range of options and interfaces

NOTE 2021-01-20 10.16 +0200: I will soon update those to match the newest version. A few things have changed, though what is here should still give you a good idea of what to expect.

Refer to the Info manual for the specifics of the Modus Operandi and Modus Vivendi themes. In short: they are designed to conform with the highest accessibility standard for relative colour luminance, they are highly customisable, and cover practically every package or interface you may want to use in your Emacs session.

The following correspond to version 0.13.0 and were taken on 2020-09-27. The typeface is my modified version of Hack, set at point size 13.

Click to enlarge the image, because the smaller size can affect your perception of what is on display.

Default looks

This is what you get out-of-the-box. We try to offer a generic experience that conforms with the overarching accessibility objective of the themes, but is otherwise fairly minimalist.

Mode line variations

You noticed the style of the modelines in the previous screen shots. Here we showcase the optional three-dimensional effect for the active modeline or the one that suits the moody package (as always, check the manual).

3D active modeline

“moody” modeline

Syntax-related options

Several customisation options are available for you to tweak the themes to your liking.

Fringe visibility, bold constructs, slanted constructs

By default, the themes will apply a bold weight and a slant (italics font style) only where it is absolutely necessary. They will also not show the space occupied by the fringes. Though you can always change that.

Line numbers, current line, delimiter matching

These show the differences between the default and optional styles for the current line (hl-line-mode) and matching delimiters (show-paren-mode). The line numbers are just a common feature that we include in this demo, because why not?

“Faint” code syntax

Users can opt for a more desaturated style for code syntax highlighting. Here we show it together with the optional “intense” style for fringes (do check the manual, please).

Styles for prose (Org, Markdown…)

In this section we will be covering a lot of org-mode, but you can expect the same styles to apply in markdown-mode and a few others, when that is possible or makes sense.

Org default style

Org buffers contain a lot of information. We try to avoid applying too intense colouration, though you can always change that.

Org source blocks

Source blocks can be configured to use a standard grayscale style for their background (there is also an option to add an accented background to blocks depending on the programming language they use—ideal for those of you who combine multiple code snippets in your documents).

Here we just show the greyscale style.

Scalable and variable-pitch headings

Setting the options for “scalable” and “variable-pitch” headings can quickly change the tone of your document (check the manual, because the themes also support more advanced “mixed font” configurations).

Granular control over headline styles

The manual explains in detail how to configure things for each heading level, or for all of them at once. There are lots of styles on offer. Here we just demonstrate a few of them.

Headings with “rainbow” style

Apply more saturated colours to all heading levels. This is just for demo purposes, as you can always decide the style of each level individually.

Headings with “section” style

An overline and a tinted background for all heading levels, while retaining the default text colour for each of them (though that too can be changed—consult the manual).

Headings with a variety of styles

Spot the differences between the heading levels on display. Did I tell you that the manual is your friend?

Styles for completion frameworks

A good part of your time with Emacs involves interacting with a completion framework like the built-in icomplete (my choice), ivy, helm, selectrum, ido, sallet.

The manual explains how to tweak their aesthetics and what kind of grouping is applied to them. The two representatives of each group are Icomplete and Ivy.

Icomplete

Here we use icomplete in tandem with icomplete-vertical and orderless. The screenshots cover the default, moderate, opinionated aesthetics in this order.

Ivy default, moderate, opinionated

As with above, the screenshots encompass the default, moderate, and opinionated aesthetics in this exact order.

Diff-related styles

By default, all diffs use prominent colour-coded combinations of background and foreground values. Word-wise, or “refined”, diffs are configured accordingly to always convey their information in an unambiguous way. Users can opt for “desaturated” or “foreground only” diff styles, though word-wise changes will always have some background (it changes to match the overall style, but is never removed altogether).

Magit diffs

Here we show magit, but expect more-or-less the same from diff-mode, smerge-mode, and the like. The images are in order: nil (default), desaturated, fg-only.

Ediff

And here we just add an ediff set of examples, because of some extra styles this mode uses, relative to the other libraries.

Command prompt styles

Here we compare the default, subtle, and intense prompts in this order.

Attention to every detail

We do not merely optimise for the numerous customisation options. We rather make sure that everything else works well. The themes have a wide palette of colours, many of which are dedicated to particular tasks (because technicalities are always in the details that the untrained eye, i.e. armchair designer, blithely ignores).

Dired and diredfl

The various “marks” that you can use in modes like dired have styles that convey their function. We also showcase diredfl as a case where we do apply a variety of colours while actively avoiding exaggerations and “rainbow effects”.

Fringe indicators

Emacs’ fringes can only display bitmap images, which means that assigning just a foreground colour to them is a bad idea for accessibility. We thus opt for a background+foreground combination. It is easy to identify the individual indicators, while none of them is too intense to distract you from whatever it is you are focused on. Also, note the colour-coded underlines (remember that the “red” of the underline is not the same as the one of the fringe or that used elsewhere, due to the peculiar requirements of each element).

Searches, matches, highlights, tooltips

All indicators have a unique purpose. Our task is to convey that in the final design. Consider how grep and related functions use a style that differs from the current and other isearch matches, and how they both differ from the item pointed by the mouse as well as from the tooltip.

Gnus

All mail readers supported by the themes are carefully designed. Here we just offer a hint at what Gnus’ summary and article buffers look like.

Org agenda

We do cover a lot of workflows. Here is the standard Org agenda.

Bongo

The point of including a niche tool like bongo (which I have extended quite a bit—see my dotemacs), is to press on with the claim that we do pay close attention to detail.