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Solarized

ethanschoonover.com

81–90 of 186 posts

Re: Solarized

#82
It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users.

Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prior to meeting him. Thanks Ethan!

Re: Solarized

#83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ought to be possible to do a search/replace operation on dracula themes to get e.g. solarized everywhere. It would be useful with a public repository with [e.g.] solarized theme for “all” applications, the same way Dracula Theme has.

Actually that’s a fantastic idea. Should have thought of that for myself. But as a warning, a lot of the Dracula themes are are not correctly (for some reason especially the Dracula Pro themes). For example the iTerm and Kitty theme have same foreground and background color set so I had to fix them manually. Doesn’t seem that they are tested by the author.

Right, if the dracula files are incorrect then it's gonna be a mess.

Re: Solarized

#84
post #82

It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users. Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prio…

That is simply not true. I can recommend Kai Light, Espresso Light, XCode Classic Light, Horizon Light off the top of my head.

Re: Solarized

#85
post #20

As someone with an important astigmatism, I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme, even if I love their aesthetic. So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes. In this context, Solarized is a gift and I’m grateful for it. I just cannot name another light color scheme you could stare at all day long without burning your eyes.

Font legibility and point size are quite crucial for me. I can work with light on dark if using a non blurry pixmap font, terminus being my favorite.

I tend to use monochrome on dark backgrounds, I prefer white on blue to the usual light grey on black.

During the day, I like the rather colorful light Emacs leuven theme: https://github.com/fniessen/emacs-leuven-theme.

For some reason, I find the default acme editor very nice to use, from a legibility and information density POV.

Re: Solarized

#86
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you used Borland C++, DBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and others... or used a monochromatic monitor (green, cyan or white on black), you used light text on a dark background. By 2010, when Solarized appeared, the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired. Solarized did a good job in terms of distribution, I give you that 100%. But it is not the most importan…

Not sure why you're downvoted, but anyone that fondly remembers the "Borland Blue" days probably agrees with you.

Possibly the downvotes are because folks (like me) who started coding in light text on dark backgrounds in the 80s had emphatically not hit retirement age by 2010? They'd be between their late thirties and maybe late fifties, unless you want to push it all the way back to the 1970s or earlier -- the build-out of computing infrastructure over the past century has been exponential, so there is always a preponderance of young/new developers, but with retirement age nearing 70 folks who began programming in the early 1970s are in many cases still working.

(I went sideways and left software development entirely. But I'm 58 and very much still working with text on screens and routinely use dark mode.)

Re: Solarized

#87
post #82

It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users. Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prio…

That is simply not true. I can recommend Kai Light, Espresso Light, XCode Classic Light, Horizon Light off the top of my head.

Thank you for the recommendations. I will check them out. To be fair, it's been a couple years since I last looked, and at that time it wasn't that there were _no_ other light themes, but there were very few and they were not nearly as good as Solarized, which I guess is a personal preference. But, I really do appreciate the recommendations, and look forward to trying some new colors.

Re: Solarized

#88

I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. I'm going out on a limb, but perhaps macOS' Dark Mode, or VSCode's dark mode, wouldn't exist without Solarized blazing that path. It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing re…

If you used Borland C++, DBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and others... or used a monochromatic monitor (green, cyan or white on black), you used light text on a dark background. By 2010, when Solarized appeared, the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired. Solarized did a good job in terms of distribution, I give you that 100%. But it is not the most importan…

> the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired.

We're not that old!

Re: Solarized

#89

I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. I'm going out on a limb, but perhaps macOS' Dark Mode, or VSCode's dark mode, wouldn't exist without Solarized blazing that path. It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing re…

If you used Borland C++, DBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and others... or used a monochromatic monitor (green, cyan or white on black), you used light text on a dark background. By 2010, when Solarized appeared, the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired. Solarized did a good job in terms of distribution, I give you that 100%. But it is not the most importan…

I'll add WordPerfect v5.1 for DOS.

White text on Blue background.

Re: Solarized

#90
post #20

As someone with an important astigmatism, I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme, even if I love their aesthetic. So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes. In this context, Solarized is a gift and I’m grateful for it. I just cannot name another light color scheme you could stare at all day long without burning your eyes.

As a guy with regular myopia, I have trouble with dark themes.

Well dang it... I have both astigmatism and myopia. I guess I have double the discomfort, then.
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