Hi there,
just to throw a couple of ideas into the pot whilst this discussion is still active.
I had a think about this recently, and had some similar thoughts about the usefulness of themes. I agree with Allan, in that I think that it's probably possible to get a theme that caters for all your desires. However, what I would suggest is that this is probably a very difficult and time consuming task. The theme you would have to create would be rather large, and difficult to write. And (to me at least) what would be most annoying is that other people have written parts of the 'perfect solution'. So, part A of theme 1 would be useful, part B of theme 2 also... etc. The problem is that themes aren't modular. I'd really like to be able to compose a theme from various theme modules.
My second thought is probably a lot wilder, and therefore potentially useless, but sometimes bonkers thoughts need to be thrown out there. I wondered to what extent the colours within theme modules could be relative. Hmm, that doesn't sound so descriptive. What I'm trying to explain is that if within a particular theme module (if they were to exist) the colours could be made relative to a base colour. Therefore, if somebody didn't like a colour scheme, they could choose a different base colour, and the theme would reflect it. Crazy eh!
Anyway, back to modules for themes. I'd like to be able to pick one guy's great module for LaTeX, another's for CSS, and my own for Ruby, etc. I'd also need to be able to prioritise them, in case there were any attempts to redefine the highlighting for the same scope.
I'm not suggesting that these be implemented, I'm just throwing the ideas out for general discussion.
Sam Aaron ---- http://sam.aaron.name