Re: themes

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Miles Bader <miles.bader.fz@renesas.com> writes:

> 1. I normally have a dark-background.  Since the "tango" theme is a
>    light-background theme, I did "load-theme RET tango RET" expecting
>    it to change my background color ... which it didn't.  Instead, my
>    window flashed, and some random faces changed, but mainly things
>    seemed exactly the same.

That sounds like a bug.  The tango theme defines "#eeeeec" for the
background of the `default' face.  Indeed, I just tried with a dark
background set using .Xresources (Emacs.background: Black), and
M-x load-theme RET tango RET changes the background to pale grey.  Could
you provide more details?

> 2. The basic interface seems to be "load-theme", which also turns on
>    the theme, and then you can subsequently use "disable-theme" and
>    "enable-theme" to turn it off or on again.
>
>    Isn't this kind oaf out-of-sync with general Emacs policy, which is
>    that "loading" should only load stuff, and not actually execute it?
>
>    Perhaps it would be better to deprecate load-theme for user usage,
>    make `enable-theme' the main entry point, and give the latter the
>    ability to auto-load themes (and do completion on unloaded themes) etc.

I think this is a good idea.

The main entry point for users, however, should be M-x customize-themes,
rather than the load-theme/enable-theme/disable-theme commands.  This
interface, by default, allows only one theme to be selected at once
(unchecking the "Allow more than one theme at a time" box allows
multiple selections).  This should alleviate the confusion you allude to
over stacking themes.