Hello, my name is Thomas. And I am addicted to making textMate themes. Please feed my addiction by suggesting theme ideas.
I have been told that my themes make peoples eyes bleed. They are obviously of limited use, therefore.
If people seriously want a certain theme, I WILL make it (eventually). I've got a process down now that's really quick.
----- I WANT TO KNOW:
Who uses what theme in textMate? What themes have you used from previous systems or applications? visual studio? dreamweaver? bbedit? foo.app? Do you like them?
Do you want an 'expert designer' to tell you what you should like? <insert canned laughter here> Do you have bad taste and should be ignored? <again.. haha>
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds? Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast? Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors? What colors do you like? Please give examples. Do you have synisthesia? Are certain elements 'supposed' to be a certain color?
What languages do you want to have colored? Do you want different languages to have different colors? -----
Please provide example screen shots (or links to them to keep from clogging the list) if at all possible.
Thank you for 'enabling' my habit ;D
Great! I'll just request stuff and then it happen, I love that :)
I WANT TO KNOW:
Who uses what theme in textMate?
I use the Mac Classic theme, possibly slightly modified, but not by much.
What themes have you used from previous systems or applications? visual studio? dreamweaver? bbedit? foo.app? Do you like them?
Dreamweaver and BBedit ... and TurboPascal/TurboC back in the good old days (the DOS one with blue background and yellow text). I like Dreamweavers ability to colour forms differently, but otherwise I think it's a bit lacking. I liked BBedits HTML theme, but it was severely lacking in javascript (which I use quite a lot). I'd be quite happy with a "buffed" BBedit theme actually, now that I think about it, you sent me one once I think, switching now ... hmmm, well that was quite ok actually. Will be keeping this (instead of Mac Classic) :)
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds?
I HATE coloured backgrounds. It must be all white, or possibly just slightly grayish (at lowest 245, 245, 245) to blend in good with the other environment.
Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
Yes, yes and yes again just to be on the safe side. I could possibly agree to just a slight colour tint for the background, something you'd hardly notice but that would (?) be recognized unconsciously once you've gotten used to the theme.
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast?
Don't really have a preference.
Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors?
I like "bundles" of colour, say you have one hue for tag name, then you have very different hues for attributes, then again different hues for strings/constants.
What colors do you like? Please give examples.
I like blue and purple ... hehe, like apples folders (smart and otherwise).
Do you have synisthesia? Are certain elements 'supposed' to be a certain color?
I don't know why, but it feels like html-tags should be blue and strings should be not necesserily red, but in that direction.
What languages do you want to have colored?
The web stuff; html, javascript, css and php.
Do you want different languages to have different colors?
Not necessery.
Please provide example screen shots (or links to them to keep from clogging the list) if at all possible.
http://www.informatik.gu.se/~a01andy/monochrome.png It's supposed to be used in white on black (command+control+option +8), and will then be wonderfully retro-monochrome. You might think about using such reverse themes, cus sometimes I like to kick inot that mode, at least I have an idea that it's easier on the eyes when coding for long, and you don't have to look at pictures or anything. It was made mostly as an experiment, and has only two colour, but I've been thinking on expanding it with perhaps blue and yellow as well, and different hues of that.
Thank you for 'enabling' my habit ;D
Thank you for making themes.
Andreas
and TurboPascal/TurboC back in the good old days (the DOS one with blue background and yellow text).
You know, I never got started with Windows programming because the Windows editors just weren't up to the Turbo Pascal look and feel. I loved editing in that.
I, however, suspect it'll be hard to bring that experience to a modern theme. Would love to see attempts anyway.
PS
I hate underlines in all situations, and since I usually code in Monaco 9 pts non-smoothed, bold and italic is also out. Although I have been known to use monaco 12 smoothed and I suppose that would allow for italic and bold.
DS
Andreas
On 11/09/2005, at 17.57, Thomas Aylott wrote:
I WANT TO KNOW: Who uses what theme in textMate?
I use Espresso Libre submitted by Chris Thomas... I highly recomend it for people who think the 'white' themes are too bright. It's dark, but not as dark as the 'black' themes. Those are too dark for my taste, at least. Espresso Libre is... comfy :-p.
-- Sune.
On Sep 11, 2005, at 4:58 PM, Sune Foldager wrote:
I use Espresso Libre submitted by Chris Thomas... I highly recomend it for people who think the 'white' themes are too bright. It's dark, but not as dark as the 'black' themes. Those are too dark for my taste, at least. Espresso Libre is... comfy :-p.
When Espresso Libre first came out I didn't like it. Now that I've used it a bit more I really like it. I enjoy the subtlety.
--- I have taken that excellent theme and changed all the colors to the same colors used on the iLife 05 box. The result isn't as good as the original. But my ADHD demands options. My goal is to have to scroll in the theme selection dropdown box. ;D This is meant as a complimentary work, not an improvement or a replacement, by any means. Espresso Libre = good Espresso Libre iLife = bad, but different
On Sep 11, 2005, at 11:57 PM, thomas Aylott wrote:
Who uses what theme in textMate?
Twilight
What themes have you used from previous systems or applications? visual studio? dreamweaver? bbedit? foo.app? Do you like them?
Twilight and Pastels on Dark in TextMate are some of the best themes I've seen in a code editor.
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds? Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
yeah hate it. I prefer the same background colour everywhere.
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast?
lower contrast. that's why I like twilight - subdued text colour on dark grey.
Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors? What colors do you like? Please give examples.
I don't mind different colours.
I've always preferred orange for comments and blue/green for variables.
What languages do you want to have colored? Do you want different languages to have different colors?
Not to the point where it doesn't look like part of the theme.
Hmm, I actually really like twilight, but I still find it disturbing to have my code background dark when everything else is white. So, is there an easy way to invert a theme? So I can have twilight inverted, to make it look like it does now when I hit cmd+ctr+opt+8? Or even better yet, a checkbox like "adapt to inverted screen color" or something :) So that every theme adapts when I switch global colours!
Andreas
Hmm, I actually really like twilight, but I still find it disturbing to have my code background dark when everything else is white. So, is there an easy way to invert a theme? So I can have twilight inverted, to make it look like it does now when I hit cmd +ctr+opt+8? Or even better yet, a checkbox like "adapt to inverted screen color" or something :) So that every theme adapts when I switch global colours!
The easiest way would be to wait for it's twin (bright) sibling to be done, Morningtide. Taken a backburner to XHTML recently... but I'll try and get it done before 1.1. Depending of course on when that is...
The easiest way would be to wait for it's twin (bright) sibling to be done, Morningtide. Taken a backburner to XHTML recently... but I'll try and get it done before 1.1. Depending of course on when that is...
Oh, please hurry up :)
In order to try and make this letter at least somewhat relevant, I pose the following question; has there been no colour syntax reseach done? What colours are good for what keywords and so on, of course different languages are different in style (some more variable heavy than others and so forth) but wouldn't there be some sort of "universal best", or rather variants of that, since some people have poor eysight for example. But shouldn't it be possible to produce say 3-5 themes that are scientifically "good"?
Andreas
On Sep 11, 2005, at 11:57 AM, thomas Aylott wrote:
Thank you for 'enabling' my habit ;D
iLife 05 textMate theme White background. Low contrast. No underlining. Very subtle background colors only. Also works inside-out using Universal Access cmd-opt-crtl-8. Based on the colors on the iLife 2005 box.
Please let me know if it looks nasty with your code. Code snippets or screenshots would help. Thanks
Quick brain dump on themes:
1. Some random theme ideas. I don't have time to work on these at the moment; feel free to steal them.
- Imperfect: WordPerfect DOS (bright white text on a blue (#0000FF) background -- use with imitation DOS font for best effect) - God Save Brand X: Standard BBEdit colors - Merchandise No. 5: Coca-Cola colors (white on red -- really bad for the eyes, I suspect)
2. Observation: preprocessor highlighting (heavily used with C/C++/ ObjC) is missing from most of the themes that I haven't touched.
3. I prefer a solid white background, but this is likely because I started programming on the Mac rather than on a dumb terminal or DOS. I sometimes use the dark themes, mainly to admire the artistry of the color selection. Also, I try to test syntax modifications with all the themes.
4. SaintEdit had a unique feature I haven't seen anywhere else. It had two coordinated built-in themes, one light and one dark. You could set it to automatically use the dark theme at night and switch to the light theme during the day.
5. Dark theme authors: why are all of your comment colors dark gray on black? Do you not wish to read comments? Are your monitors broken, or what? How disturbing. </king-of-all-cosmos>
6. TextMate might benefit from grouping themes into categories: "Light", "Dark", "Retro", "Beverages/Foodstuffs"...
7. I like your mint theme. (But see item 5 above.)
Chris
On Sep 11, 2005, at 11:57 AM, thomas Aylott wrote:
Hello, my name is Thomas. And I am addicted to making textMate themes. Please feed my addiction by suggesting theme ideas.
I have been told that my themes make peoples eyes bleed. They are obviously of limited use, therefore.
If people seriously want a certain theme, I WILL make it (eventually). I've got a process down now that's really quick.
I WANT TO KNOW:
Who uses what theme in textMate? What themes have you used from previous systems or applications? visual studio? dreamweaver? bbedit? foo.app? Do you like them?
Do you want an 'expert designer' to tell you what you should like?
<insert canned laughter here> Do you have bad taste and should be ignored? <again.. haha>
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds? Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast? Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors? What colors do you like? Please give examples. Do you have synisthesia? Are certain elements 'supposed' to be a certain color?
What languages do you want to have colored? Do you want different languages to have different colors?
Please provide example screen shots (or links to them to keep from clogging the list) if at all possible.
Thank you for 'enabling' my habit ;D
For new threads USE THIS: textmate@lists.macromates.com (threading gets destroyed and the universe will collapse if you don't) http://lists.macromates.com/mailman/listinfo/textmate
- Dark theme authors: why are all of your comment colors dark gray on
black? Do you not wish to read comments? Are your monitors broken, or what? How disturbing. </king-of-all-cosmos>
I'm not really a theme author but as a theme user I must say I really appreciate this. I hate comments getting in the way of reading code. In fact, if there was an equivalent of css' display:none for comments with a quick keyboard shortcut to toggle it, I'd absolutely use it all day.
Reading RDoc-infested code is a major pain, for example. Having the comment text blend into the background is a saving grace, and it's not like you can't read it if you really want to, but definitely I like it out of my way most of the time.
On Sep 11, 2005, at 8:53 PM, Chris Thomas wrote:
- Imperfect: WordPerfect DOS (bright white text on a blue
(#0000FF) background -- use with imitation DOS font for best effect)
oh yeah. Sweet retro DOS goodness. Actually it's more like #00A than #00F. I used to be an old BBS ANSi guy, back in 'the day'. http:// www.sixteencolors.net/Artist/?Artist=agent_42
---
- God Save Brand X: Standard BBEdit colors
Next
---
- Observation: preprocessor highlighting (heavily used with C/C++/
ObjC) is missing from most of the themes that I haven't touched.
I'm going to need some example code to figure out what that is & what it should look like. Any idea where I could get a sample?
---
- Dark theme authors: why are all of your comment colors dark gray
on black? Do you not wish to read comments? Are your monitors broken, or what? How disturbing. </king-of-all-cosmos> 7. I like your mint theme. (But see item 5 above.)
As a representative of the Dark theme authors union, we would like to extend our humblest apologies for your inconvenience. Please see the updated version of mint with visible comments. mmm... contrasty...
Usually, i'm working in old code files with giant sections of code commented out. (because "you never know when they'll let you to make it work the way it worked 6 months ago & expect it to get done in an hour"... apparently ) So I usually keep my comments pretty innocuous.
- Observation: preprocessor highlighting (heavily used with C/C++/
ObjC) is missing from most of the themes that I haven't touched.
I don't use C but I tried to get this working for Twilight, someone please tell me if it's not working good ;)
- Dark theme authors: why are all of your comment colors dark gray
on black? Do you not wish to read comments? Are your monitors broken, or what? How disturbing. </king-of-all-cosmos>
Well I like to see the code stand out and the non-code fade more into the background. Same reason Twilight does the same to HTML doctypes and such. I have thought however that it would be a good use for dynamic scopes... If the cursor is currently inside a comment block it's contrast could be upped, which is actually the opposite of what happens now with my current line highlight... Then again that might get annoying, unsure.
On 11/09/2005, at 17.57, thomas Aylott wrote:
What themes have you used from previous systems or applications?
I was using StormC on Amiga -- unfortunately I can't find any screenshot of it, but the 4 Amiga colors can be seen here: http:// www.diku.dk/hjemmesider/studerende/duff/DefProtect/DefProtect.PNG
The editor used the standard grey background, black for text, white for comments, strings, and integers, bold for keywords, and bold blue for types (iirc).
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds?
I don't like black backgrounds, mostly because it makes the rest of the (surrounding) UI seem to bright. I do like colored backgrounds. Particularly I liked the Mint background, which reminds me of http:// daringfireball.net/ (which also has nice reading/coding colors) -- as for the grey Amiga background, I do seem to recall that when MagicWB was introduced, I switched to the “MWB Half-shine pen” which I think is the color used in the text fields on this grab: http:// www.sasg.com/mwb/gallery/stuntzi.gif (of course back then I was on a CRT, so the colors was darker).
Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
I like it for embedded code in HTML -- mostly when that code is single line though.
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast?
High contrast! My vision is sub-standard, so some colors look almost the same, when there's very little of them (like with letters), and they have similar contrast.
Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors? What colors do you like? Please give examples. Do you have synisthesia? Are certain elements 'supposed' to be a certain color?
Comments are supposed to be italic! And I prefer underline only on stuff which is like a headline (so like class name, not strings).
I also like the cursor to stand out -- it was to subtle on Mint, so I changed that to white cursor (removed plain text specific colors, which had white background).
What languages do you want to have colored? Do you want different languages to have different colors?
Eventually TM will allow themes to be bound to file types, so I don't think one theme should try to color languages differently, other than for effect (like All Hallow's Eve).
On 9/11/05, thomas Aylott thomas.42@gmail.com wrote:
I WANT TO KNOW:
Who uses what theme in textMate?
I use this one, it was originally based on the the rails bundle colours (back when there was no themes as such in TM), only slightly nicer colours for everything. In my severely humble opinion of course :)
JS
On Sep 11, 2005, at 9:57 AM, thomas Aylott wrote:
Who uses what theme in textMate?
All Hallow's Eve
What themes have you used from previous systems or applications? visual studio? dreamweaver? bbedit? foo.app? Do you like them?
BBEdit's factory colors. I liked it at the time. SciTE's factory colors on Windows. I like it fine also.
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds?
Yup. Dark and desaturated is easier on my eyes. Also, it makes it less likely for the light from my laptop to awaken my wife when I'm coding in bed later than I ought to be :)
Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
For individual elements, yes. Per-item BG color changes should be reserved for the current line, or something really odd (like SciTE's highlighting of the remainder of a line when a string literal remains unclosed).
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast?
High contrast is a'ight in small doses.
Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors?
Hrm, I'm using All Hallow's Eve, so apparently garish is good with me.
What colors do you like? Please give examples.
For my wallpaper/bedsheets - dark saturated colors, dark desaturated colors, or light desaturated. Slate blues and mint greens and burgundies.
Do you have synisthesia? Are certain elements 'supposed' to be a certain color?
Nope.
What languages do you want to have colored?
Ruby, ERB, HTML
Do you want different languages to have different colors?
Per-language coloring isn't a terrible idea, but I think that when languages share common atoms (strings, numbers, regexp, keywords, variable names, etc.) that those languages should share the same color for the atoms, to reinforce the color-to-object mapping at all times.
I forgot to add - although TextMate doesn't currently support it, I have found it interesting, and in some cases not bad, the way that SciTE changes fonts from one type of element to another, with some (e.g. comments) even being *gasp* not monospaced.
I know, I thought I'd hate it, too. And sometimes it's a PITA, like if you have a huge RDoc block with code example inside of it that you're trying to line up. But sometimes it just feels like prose or something.
On 12/09/2005, at 14.31, Gavin Kistner wrote:
I forgot to add - although TextMate doesn't currently support it, I have found it interesting, and in some cases not bad, the way that SciTE changes fonts from one type of element to another, with some (e.g. comments) even being *gasp* not monospaced.
With the current syntax system and me sometimes writing Markdown, I do see the value in this. But changing to multi-font (and non- monospace) support is a big task, and will be post 1.3.
On 11 Sep 2005, at 16:57, thomas Aylott wrote:
If people seriously want a certain theme, I WILL make it (eventually).
The 'pablo' theme from vim would be nice. Or the colours I use in XEmacs (basically the default 'dark background' colours, with a deep blue background).
Who uses what theme in textMate?
Until I started reading this thread, 'Mac Classic'. I'm currently experimenting with 'Pastels on Dark', though I think it needs some tweaking before I'll like it.
What themes have you used from previous systems or applications?
See above; pablo in vim and a tweaked one on XEmacs.
Do you like black backgrounds? Do you like colored backgrounds?
Dark coloured backgrounds, yeah. Either black or a deep blue works well for me.
Do you hate excessive use of background colors? ...for the page? ...for individual elements?
I find the use of different background colours for individual elements to be irritating, sometimes. I find blocks of different colour jarring when I'm trying to read.
Do you like high contrast? Do you prefer lower contrast?
High contrast good, particularly if the sun's shining anywhere nearby. OK, so that only happens, like, two days a year up here in Scotland. :-)
Do you like having a bunch of different colors or would you prefer one with shades of only a few colors?
Different colours. Enough that it's easy to see at a glance what a particular atom is, where it starts and where it stops. Syntax highlighting is supposed to be an aid to reading/writing the code, not just pretty colours. :)
What languages do you want to have colored?
XHTML/XML, Ruby, Python, C++.
Do you want different languages to have different colors?
No. The same type of atom should be the same colour in every language. If a string is green in Ruby, it should be green in every language in the world ever.
It's nice to see what theme everyone is using, although I haven't seen anyone who admits to using iPlastic... I wrote it originally, as the first theme for TM, taking some nice things from SEE, vim and others.
But I'd like to hear from people what's wrong with it, how it could be improved...
And I'm also very interested in a 'scientific' research about what in themes makes it best to use.
Jeroen.
I use iPlastic for everything. I used to be a dark background guy, started using iPlastic for no apparent reason, and still am.
I even like the transparency! Something I'd like to see (slightly of topic) is a shortcut to either (a) change themes (more general), (b) or change the transparency of the background (less general). Because then I'd be able to see what's under my document at the press of a button, a feature that I use iPlastic for when looking at, say, a web page and editing a document to do with that page. If I could switch themes with a keypress, then I'd make an iPlastic theme with no transparency, and another with higher contrast and more transparency.
Cheerio, Ian
On 12 Sep 2005, at 16:39, Jeroen van der Ham wrote:
It's nice to see what theme everyone is using, although I haven't seen anyone who admits to using iPlastic... I wrote it originally, as the first theme for TM, taking some nice things from SEE, vim and others.
But I'd like to hear from people what's wrong with it, how it could be improved...
And I'm also very interested in a 'scientific' research about what in themes makes it best to use.
Jeroen.
For new threads USE THIS: textmate@lists.macromates.com (threading gets destroyed and the universe will collapse if you don't) http://lists.macromates.com/mailman/listinfo/textmate
On 12-09-2005 17:50, Ian White wrote:
(b) or change the transparency of the background (less general). Because then I'd be able to see what's under my document at the press of a button, a feature that I use iPlastic for when looking at, say, a web page and editing a document to do with that page.
That'd be a very good addition indeed. This could be achieved by changing themes with a keycommand, but I think changing transparency with a keyboard shortcut might be nice to have.
Jeroen.
iPlastic is too bright and the syntax colours do not have enough contrast against the background.
Richard
Jeroen van der Ham wrote:
It's nice to see what theme everyone is using, although I haven't seen anyone who admits to using iPlastic... I wrote it originally, as the first theme for TM, taking some nice things from SEE, vim and others.
But I'd like to hear from people what's wrong with it, how it could be improved...
And I'm also very interested in a 'scientific' research about what in themes makes it best to use.
Jeroen.
For new threads USE THIS: textmate@lists.macromates.com (threading gets destroyed and the universe will collapse if you don't) http://lists.macromates.com/mailman/listinfo/textmate
I actually used iPlastic for some time (enough to remove the transparency and make the background just ever so gray). The killer is two things; I HATE how HTML markup is displayed, the bland blue with the green really looks ugly. I'd suggest making the blue a little more blue, and the green somewhat entirely different. I also don't like how tag-attributes are black, they should be something else. Probably a bit "less" than the HTML tag, so say attributes are about the same blue that tags are now, and then you make the tags darker. Otherwise I think it's quite good :)
Andreas
On Sep 12, 2005, at 17:39 , Jeroen van der Ham wrote:
It's nice to see what theme everyone is using, although I haven't seen anyone who admits to using iPlastic... I wrote it originally, as the first theme for TM, taking some nice things from SEE, vim and others.
But I'd like to hear from people what's wrong with it, how it could be improved...
And I'm also very interested in a 'scientific' research about what in themes makes it best to use.
Jeroen.
For new threads USE THIS: textmate@lists.macromates.com (threading gets destroyed and the universe will collapse if you don't) http://lists.macromates.com/mailman/listinfo/textmate
On 12-09-2005 18:39, Andreas Wahlin wrote:
I actually used iPlastic for some time (enough to remove the transparency and make the background just ever so gray). The killer is two things; I HATE how HTML markup is displayed, the bland blue with the green really looks ugly.
Now that you mentioned it, I had been bothered by the XML/HTML display, but hadn't realised it yet. I did have a personal change so that the attribute was coloured, but I forgot to commit it.
I have changed it now so that the blues are a bit harder blue. The attributes are a bit lighter, and italics. I haven't found a good replacement colour for the green, although I think it looks better now with the changed blue.
If you have any more suggestions, please send them in :)
Jeroen.
-
Allan Odgaard -
Andreas Wahlin -
Caio Chassot -
Chris Thomas -
Gavin Kistner -
Graeme Mathieson -
Ian White -
Jeroen van der Ham -
Johan Sörensen -
Kris Khaira -
Michael Sheets -
Richard, eightfive -
Sune Foldager -
thomas Aylott