Re: solarized

[Protesilaos Stavrou]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-09-16, 15:38 +0200]:

> Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com> writes:
>> On another note, do we really need to strictly conform with the
>> 16-colour palette?

> Batsov's Solarized gives you total of 32 colors. I certainly don't want to see
> all 32 colors at once in the gui :-). Anyway 16 of those are ment for
> extreme cases, and are just shades of eight accented colors, ligher and 
> darker.

Agreed!  I never advocated for adding rainbows anywhere.  My point is
that the "extreme cases" that need more refined colouration are not that
uncommon after all.  And I gave specific examples, such as diffs with
word-wise changes (and Magit), isearch, occur, completion UIs.

> If those are not enough for some extreme case, user can always do what
> they do now, specify rgb value directly; but for *most* part, hopefully
> 16 colors would be enough. Nobody said it has to be enough for
> *everybody everywhere*.

That is always an option.  My impression, however, is that we are
thinking about how to improve upon the state of affairs.  One such way
is to offer more complete face/colour coverage for everyone (and they
can still configure it afterwards).  To that I also add the
accessibility angle.  Perhaps I misunderstood the intent of this
discussion, so please accept my apologies.

>> In my experience, 16 colours is too limited of a set to design bespoke,
>> usable, and pleasing interfaces that match the wide array of needs an
>> Emacs user has.
> Design literature on contrary says something in lines of "less is more",
> both when it comes to color and form.
>
> Too many colors and you get rainbow. Look at dired+ screenshot I
> attached. Every "property" is coded in different color, and it just
> looks horrible when put together.
>
> Another subject, similar to gui theme colors, is syntax highlighting. Too much
> syntax highlighting can be as detrimental as none, see for example this paper:
>
> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d14b/edf3f58080ecf7a92f60746371b894a7bc08.pdf
>
> and this screenshot:
>
> https://imgur.com/zhCs4Bv
>
> Maybe some thoughts here:
>
> https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/

These are all interesting and fecund.  A good design must avoid
exaggerations, rainbow effects, and design for its own sake.

This, however, is an indictment against poorly implemented themes,
though not extended colour palettes as such.  Your attached screenshot
uses what looks like ~14 colours.

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
protesilaos.com