help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

Question: Can I have help open help not in the other
window but always in the window from which it is
invoked, and not changing the window configuration
apart from obviously showing the help buffer?

Remark: In the recent thread about the possible
colorization of help buffers, the notion appeared that
~"you don't need syntax highlight because it is not
code". Here I disagree completely. There are tons of
things which aren't code, but is still structured and/or
contain distinct elements of data that fall into
categories (e.g., paths, links, definitions, and so
on), and thus are benefited from colorization just
as well.

Here is a dump [1] that shows a man page, and
Emacs-w3m showing some files in a directory. Do I feel
confident not having those colors and still maintain
the level of readability, or actually the ability to
not have to read, but still get the info across?
I think not!

In a help buffer, there are many things that can be
highlighted - keys, for starters. Actually the man
pages are a good example - tho there are what I can
find only three faces (Man-overstrike, Man-underline,
and Man-reverse) that could be expanded as well
because the underlying groff has much more than the
.BR, .I, and whatever you put to get Man-reverse.
But only those two (three) make a huge difference, as
that dump shows.

I don't understand why Emacs is so dull and boring to
begin with. I spent so much time making it colorful,
which I sure don't complain about since I enjoyed it
as much as any hacker would - it is just I have
a feeling perhaps not everyone would take it upon
themselves to do that. But are them folks dull and
boring, then? Probably not!

You know what I'm saying? This is what Emacs should
look like:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=cgurWBvJbac

[1] http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/dumps/colors.png

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-07-08 00:47 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

> You know what I'm saying? This is what Emacs should
> look like:
> 
>     https://youtube.com/watch?v=cgurWBvJbac

I think the established metaphor is "fruit salad" :-)

-- 
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Tue, Jul 07, 2015 at 04:46:04PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On 2015-07-08 00:47 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> 
> > You know what I'm saying? This is what Emacs should
> > look like:
> > 
> >     https://youtube.com/watch?v=cgurWBvJbac
> 
> I think the established metaphor is "fruit salad" :-)

It's "angry fruit salad", as far as I can remember. But Emacs has a
tradition of accomodating a broad range of people, and that is the
part I actually cherish most.

I haven't played very much with themes, but wouldn't that be the
way to go?

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[martin rudalics]

 > Question: Can I have help open help not in the other
 > window but always in the window from which it is
 > invoked, and not changing the window configuration
 > apart from obviously showing the help buffer?

Maybe

(customize-set-variable
  'display-buffer-alist '(("\\*Help\\*" display-buffer-same-window)))

martin

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at> writes:

>> Question: Can I have help open help not in the
>> other window but always in the window from which it
>> is invoked, and not changing the window
>> configuration apart from obviously showing the
>> help buffer?
>
> Maybe
>
> (customize-set-variable 'display-buffer-alist
> '(("\\*Help\\*" display-buffer-same-window)))

Indeed, that worked - tho I prefer not to deal with
custom:

    (setq display-buffer-alist
       '(("\\*Help\\*" display-buffer-same-window)) )

Thank you!

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> But Emacs has a tradition of accomodating a broad
> range of people, and that is the part I actually
> cherish most.

OK, let's do an experiment. Start Emacs in X with no
configuration to it. The normal Emacs, I mean, not
emacs-nox or anything like that. Then start Gnus: add
a couple of newsgroups, examine the server, etc.
How does it look? I can't provide screenshots, because
I'm on emacs-nox, but here is how it looks for me:

    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/dumps/gmane/

Do you "see" the difference? :)

> I haven't played very much with themes, but wouldn't
> that be the way to go?

I don't like themes. If you are to fiddle with them,
you will only get frustrated and then you have to do
it manually to get the last details. But because you
didn't do anything manually before that, how will you
know what to add, and how? So you might as well do it
manually from day one and enjoy it. Only not all
people do it, so the effort should also be to make it
look its best from the get-go!

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 12:41:36PM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

[...]

> Do you "see" the difference? :)

That's all nice and well, but...

> [...] so the effort should also be to make it
> look its best from the get-go!

...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
be unsuitable for a definite purpose. So our best bet would be to
make it possible for each user to customize things for herself, as
easily as possible.

Regards
- -- t
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

>> [...] so the effort should also be to make it look
>> its best from the get-go!
>
> ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst
> nightmare. Or might be unsuitable for a definite
> purpose. So our best bet would be to make it
> possible for each user to customize things for
> herself, as easily as possible.

This old relativist thing is tired...

Obviously no one suggested Emacs shouldn't be
configurable anymore. By "best" I mean what would
appeal to most people, the most, and the quickest at
that.

I dare say a majority of humankind like colors.
Those who don't due to a limited emotional register
and lack of drug experience to compensate, to those
the most bone-headed programmers we can appeal to
their supposed intellects and say it is efficient as
well as good looking. Because it is! It is like the
girl Chun Li in the old "Street Fighter 2" game:
strength and beauty in one.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 01:28:51PM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> >> [...] so the effort should also be to make it look
> >> its best from the get-go!
> >
> > ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst
> > nightmare. Or might be unsuitable for a definite
> > purpose. So our best bet would be to make it
> > possible for each user to customize things for
> > herself, as easily as possible.
> 
> This old relativist thing is tired...

["opinionated" stuff elided]

Obviously, I disagree.
- -- t
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Michael Heerdegen]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> > [...] so the effort should also be to make it
> > look its best from the get-go!
>
> ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
> be unsuitable for a definite purpose.

There could be something like "colorization levels", e.g counting from 0
to 5, user configurable and changeable on the fly.  0 turns off any
fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4 like less angry fruit
salad, ...

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 02:28:12PM +0200, Michael Heerdegen wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> > > [...] so the effort should also be to make it
> > > look its best from the get-go!
> >
> > ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
> > be unsuitable for a definite purpose.
> 
> There could be something like "colorization levels", e.g counting from 0
> to 5, user configurable and changeable on the fly.  0 turns off any
> fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4 like less angry fruit
> salad, ...

Makes sense. OTOH, there are faces, which can be made dependent on
many things, and there's theming... so the mechanisms are there.

Are they difficult to use/customize? If yes, why?

(I can't really say: I've been mostly happy with the defaults, and when
not, I've just made some very focused changes -- actually my tendency
is towards "mild fruit salad", but I wouldn't dare to impose my prefs
on anyone)

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Dan Espen]

Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> writes:

> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>
>> > [...] so the effort should also be to make it
>> > look its best from the get-go!
>>
>> ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
>> be unsuitable for a definite purpose.
>
> There could be something like "colorization levels", e.g counting from 0
> to 5, user configurable and changeable on the fly.  0 turns off any
> fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4 like less angry fruit
> salad, ...

It's not a case of "there could be", there already is:

  You can customize the variable font-lock-maximum-decoration to alter the
  amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode, for major modes that
  support this feature. The value should be a number (with 1 representing
  a minimal amount of fontification; some modes support levels as high as
  3); or t, meaning “as high as possible” (the default).

-- 
Dan Espen

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

On 08/07/15 14:28, Michael Heerdegen wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>
>>> [...] so the effort should also be to make it
>>> look its best from the get-go!
>>
>> ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
>> be unsuitable for a definite purpose.
>
> There could be something like "colorization levels", e.g counting from 0
> to 5, user configurable and changeable on the fly.  0 turns off any
> fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4 like less angry fruit
> salad, ...

If you mean an increasing/decreasing level of contrast between colours, 
then there is a solution on EmacsWiki:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AngryFruitSalad#toc1

RE: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Drew Adams]

> It's not a case of "there could be", there already is:
> 
>   You can customize the variable font-lock-maximum-decoration to
>   alter the amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode, for
>   major modes that support this feature. The value should be a number
>   (with 1 representing a minimal amount of fontification; some modes
>   support levels as high as 3); or t, meaning “as high as possible”
>   (the default).

Yes.  Unfortunately, there are *very few* places where Emacs code
provides more than one fontification level.  And the Emacs maintainer
is not particularly fond of the existence and use of levels.  (He will
perhaps chime in, especially if I misrepresented his position on this.)

(FWIW, Dired+ provides a second fontification level for Dired.)

RE: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Drew Adams]

> > ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst nightmare. Or might
> > be unsuitable for a definite purpose.
> 
> There could be something like "colorization levels", e.g counting
> from 0 to 5, user configurable and changeable on the fly.  0 turns
> off any fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4 like less
> angry fruit salad, ...

This is not directly related, but it might help some people:

If you use Do Re Mi, you can incrementally increase or decrease
the saturation of all face foregrounds or backgrounds.  That has
the effect of increasing or decreasing angry-fruit-saladness.

For example, if background colors seem too vivid in general, you
can use command `doremi-all-faces-bg+' to make them less so.
Type `s' (for saturation), and then use the up/down arrow keys, to
change the saturation of all face backgrounds together, incrementally.

Since this changes all faces at once, you might then want to tweak
a few faces individually afterward.  You can use `doremi-face-bg+'
to do that.

When you get things the way you like, you can save all of the face
changes - or not.  IOW, it's easy to experiment with different
looks.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AngryFruitSalad#WashOutIn

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DoReMi

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Dan Espen]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> It's not a case of "there could be", there already is:
>> 
>>   You can customize the variable font-lock-maximum-decoration to
>>   alter the amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode, for
>>   major modes that support this feature. The value should be a number
>>   (with 1 representing a minimal amount of fontification; some modes
>>   support levels as high as 3); or t, meaning “as high as possible”
>>   (the default).
>
> Yes.  Unfortunately, there are *very few* places where Emacs code
> provides more than one fontification level.  And the Emacs maintainer
> is not particularly fond of the existence and use of levels.  (He will
> perhaps chime in, especially if I misrepresented his position on this.)

I don't find that too surprising, I can't think of anything in Emacs
that identifies too many things.  I'd guess the trade off would be
speed vs. identification and font-lock speed hasn't been an issue for
me for ages.

> (FWIW, Dired+ provides a second fontification level for Dired.)

My point was that the levels are already there,
whether they are useful is another matter.

-- 
Dan Espen

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> writes:

>> ...what looks to you "best" might be my worst
>> nightmare. Or might be unsuitable for
>> a definite purpose.
>
> There could be something like "colorization levels",
> e.g counting from 0 to 5, user configurable and
> changeable on the fly. 0 turns off any
> fontification, 5 looks like angry fruit salad, 4
> like less angry fruit salad, ...

Good idea!

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> Makes sense. OTOH, there are faces, which can be
> made dependent on many things, and there's
> theming... so the mechanisms are there.
>
> Are they difficult to use/customize? If yes, why?

I don't know - I've setup mine face by face and that
is something zero non-programmers would do and many
programmers wouldn't do it either for several reasons.
But they might want it still (both groups). I don't
mean exactly like mine, but the degree
of colorization.

> (I can't really say: I've been mostly happy with the
> defaults, and when not, I've just made some very
> focused changes -- actually my tendency is towards
> "mild fruit salad"

What is "mild" and "angry"? Is it the degree how much
markup should be in different colors, or is it the
intensity of the colors, i.e. the color scheme?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> If you use Do Re Mi, you can incrementally increase
> or decrease the saturation of all face foregrounds
> or backgrounds. That has the effect of increasing or
> decreasing angry-fruit-saladness.

I prefer the more straightforward RGB model which is
what is used in the Linux VTs but also in X (e.g., in
~/.Xresources) but I know of something to the extent
of what you mention and that is xdark by Sam Watkins.
It isn't in the Debian repos but should be possible to
find. Anyway despite its name it works for the ttys as
well as X (as long as invoked via X).

What I do is set the colors in terms of the colors
(mostly), then I adjust the brightness with xdark to
compensate for different projectors and the like.

I have some material on this here, including
a tutorial which isn't that old:

    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/cols/www/index.html

Here is how xdark is used:

    $ xdark -h
    usage: xdark [-i] [[from-brightness] to-brightness]
      without args, it reads the values
      brightness should be between 0.0 (dark) to 1.0 (bright)
      -i invert
    try:
      xdark 0.5
      xdark
      xdark 1 0
      xdark 0.5 0
      xdark 1

These little helpers are life savers, literally.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> ["opinionated" stuff elided]
>
> Obviously, I disagree.

It is a fact that people are different, but it is
a fact that people are very, very much the same.

If you run your bike into a cave wall and break your
leg, the doc won't examine your leg in great detail
and write a 200 page report of the unique properties
of it and the corresponding action plan to fix it.
Instead he/she will do a scan and fix it like
hundreds before.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 12:48:34AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> > Makes sense. OTOH, there are faces, which can be
> > made dependent on many things, and there's
> > theming... so the mechanisms are there.
> >
> > Are they difficult to use/customize? If yes, why?
> 
> I don't know - I've setup mine face by face and that
> is something zero non-programmers would do [...]

Yep, I get that. But as you have seen in this thread, there
are many choices actually (themes, font-lock-maximum-decoration,
the incredible Do Re Mi -- all of them addressing orthogonal
needs (overall looks, fontification detail, color saturation).

Now what would be interesting would be: what's missing (besides
"I want the default to be what I like", which obviously can't
work for everyone. Yeah, relativist and proud of it. It's the
(absolutely ;-) only thing I'm absolute about.

> What is "mild" and "angry"? Is it the degree how much
> markup should be in different colors, or is it the
> intensity of the colors, i.e. the color scheme?

A bit of both. I tend to a "deep" color scheme, but things
which are "near" (pretty subjective) get colors which are
"near" too (subjective too: my father was totally color-blind
and I inherited a bit of that, it seems).

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> Yep, I get that. But as you have seen in this
> thread, there are many choices actually (themes,
> font-lock-maximum-decoration, the incredible Do Re
> Mi -- all of them addressing orthogonal needs
> (overall looks, fontification detail, color
> saturation).
>
> Now what would be interesting would be: what's
> missing (besides "I want the default to be what
> I like", which obviously can't work for everyone.
> Yeah, relativist and proud of it. It's the
> (absolutely ;-) only thing I'm absolute about.

Absolutely :)

Here is what I would do: I'd do five distinctly
different themes, then make an example screen with
each, why not with Gnus and Emacs-w3m like in my
example dump, but that isn't important. Then I'd show
those five screens to some 500 people, and have them
arrange them in the order they like the themes the
best. Each stack, the number one theme would get five
points, the number two four, etc. And the theme with
the most points would be a good candidate how Emacs
should look by default! (And if the default X look
would win, I'm fine with that, obviously, tho I doubt
that would happen...)

The reason I think like this is: when I saw Emacs the
first time I realized it was programmable, so
I realized I could have it look and behave any way
I want it to. With this realization it becomes
irrelevant that I think it looks, well "not good", by
default. This isn't a mechanic that is restricted to
colors: many times I don't like the shortcuts (too
long and far from typing position), I don't like the
blinking cursor (disruptive), etc. etc. But to me,
none of that matters, or actually it is a good thing
to some degree as I enjoy writing Lisp and
changing things. I like problems if I can solve them
in a pleasant way!

But many people are not like this, and if they see
something they don't instinctively like they'll go for
something else *in an instant*! And this is what
I'm saying, not that my theme is better. Which it is,
of course, so now I said that as well :)

>> What is "mild" and "angry"? Is it the degree how
>> much markup should be in different colors, or is it
>> the intensity of the colors, i.e. the color scheme?
>
> A bit of both. I tend to a "deep" color scheme, but
> things which are "near" (pretty subjective) get
> colors which are "near" too (subjective too: my
> father was totally color-blind and I inherited a bit
> of that, it seems).

Well, again, it is subjective between you and me, but
it isn't subjective with 500 people. For example,
green is a color which people have the easiest time
with identifying variations; red signals dangers
(think of the traffic lights); and all this is
probably an evolutionary thing. Everyone are different
compared to one another but 500 people will turn up
pretty similar - trust me, if not this post.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[tomas]

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On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 12:17:03AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
[...]

> > Yeah, relativist and proud of it. It's the
> > (absolutely ;-) only thing I'm absolute about.
> 
> Absolutely :)
> 
> Here is what I would do: I'd do five distinctly
> different themes, then make an example screen with
> each, why not with Gnus and Emacs-w3m like in my
> example dump, but that isn't important. Then I'd show
> those five screens to some 500 people [...]

500 Java programmers? Lisp programmers? Bus drivers?
Swedes? Indonesians? Boy scouts? Born 1940? Born 1970?
2005?

I think you get my idea: and if you want a good cross-section
you'll need *far* more than 500. This is something Apple or
Microsoft do, for sure, but they can afford to dump 'couple of
millions on it for each OS release -- and still get wrong, if
you go by the whining a Windows release causes (remember
ribbon?). Luckily I can only tell that from hearsay :)

Still I think you're onto something here: perhaps it'd be
possible to have some "best of": organize some "theme contest"
(I'm using theme sloppily here, just as a set of customizations)
and tout the n "winners" for some small n (because I guess that
the distribution is going to be strongly multi modal)

How would that be different from what we have now?

BTW: I'm off the net for a couple of months, so I'm dropping
now off this interesting conversation quite abruptly. Sorry.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> 500 Java programmers? Lisp programmers? Bus drivers?
> Swedes? Indonesians? Boy scouts? Born 1940?
> Born 1970? 2005?

If you ask me, girls in their middle-late 20s.
They have the best taste with colors. Before that,
they wear too much black. Black does not trigger any
positive emotional responses. However, in computing
a black background is good as then less light enters
the eyes of the computer user, while the other colors
contrast well, so those are the ones that should
carry information.

> I think you get my idea: and if you want a good
> cross-section you'll need *far* more than 500.
> This is something Apple or Microsoft do, for sure,
> but they can afford to dump 'couple of millions

I don't think 500 is too few because again, people are
not that different in these kinds of matters. But the
more the marrier, of course.

It wouldn't cost millions because it could be set up
as a web interface and then the whole process could
be automatized.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2015-07-10 18:08 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

> > 500 Java programmers? Lisp programmers? Bus drivers?
> 
> If you ask me, girls in their middle-late 20s.
> They have the best taste with colors. Before that,
> they wear too much black. Black does not trigger any
> positive emotional responses. 

Wrong here :-)

> However, in computing a black background is good as then less light
> enters the eyes of the computer user, while the other colors contrast
> well, so those are the ones that should carry information.

Wrong here too.  Too much contrast is tiring on the eyes.  I have both
Emacs and terminal emulators use a dark gray foreground on very light
gray (almost white) background.

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Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Dan Espen]

Ian Zimmerman <itz@buug.org> writes:

> On 2015-07-10 18:08 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
>
>> > 500 Java programmers? Lisp programmers? Bus drivers?
>> 
>> If you ask me, girls in their middle-late 20s.
>> They have the best taste with colors. Before that,
>> they wear too much black. Black does not trigger any
>> positive emotional responses. 
>
> Wrong here :-)
>
>> However, in computing a black background is good as then less light
>> enters the eyes of the computer user, while the other colors contrast
>> well, so those are the ones that should carry information.
>
> Wrong here too.  Too much contrast is tiring on the eyes.  I have both
> Emacs and terminal emulators use a dark gray foreground on very light
> gray (almost white) background.

Only proving that everyone has different tastes.

I need and want the contrast, after all, the goal is to be able to see
things,

I've never understood backgrounds other than white and black.
Anything else creates a whole bunch of colors that don't stand out.

Getting back to the Emacs defaults, I think Emacs has it mostly right.
I see a white background as the default.
I despise white backgrounds, but I accept that white is what
most people expect.  Once you use white, it only makes sense to
set the default foreground to black.  Again, that's what Emacs does
and it has it right.

Looking deeper, I see the following issues:

A number of faces are not distinct from each other,
font-lock-preprocessor-face is black because it's not set.
Firebrick and Brown look pretty much the same.
The warning face and the error face are the same.
I can't tell VioletRed4 from sienna.
font-lock-doc-face isn't unique.
There should be more dark green, I see mostly blues and reds.
More things should be bold.  The normal fonts just look to
indistinct for me.

The help buffers have some colors.
I don't see the problem.  Links are underlined and colored.

I've heavily customized my colors, but for a while I didn't
have my .emacs available.  The theme manoj-dark was fine.


-- 
Dan Espen

Re: help in same window + colorful help + Blümchen

[Emanuel Berg]

Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:

> I need and want the contrast, after all, the goal is
> to be able to see things

Contrast is good. I've never experienced too much
contrast, but I tweak my colors. I set them up
logically with the RGB model to create maximum
uniqueness, but then I use it and think, this is too
dark, this is too bright, etc. At the moment, the
colors I use are now:

   normal                         bright
   bk  r   g   y  bl   m   c   w  bk    r   g   y  bl   m   c   w
r  0 255   0 190 110 235   0 150  120 255   0 255 130 175 200 210
g  0  20 150 190 110  85 180 150  120  85 175 127 130 100 162 180
b  0  20   0   0 225 235 180 150  120  85   0   0 255   0 200 140

As you see there is clear pattern but they are the
result of the scientific approach first, setting them
up to be as distinct as possible, then the engineering
approach of tweaking +5 here, -10 there, every day.
Today, some of the colors are not as they once were,
at all.

> I've never understood backgrounds other than white
> and black. Anything else creates a whole bunch of
> colors that don't stand out.

I can't stand looking at white, but yes, this
makes sense.

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underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573