Customize theme colors (solarized dark highlighting in particular)

[Alexander Shenkin]

Hi Folks,

I'm an RStudio user, and they apparently use Ace as their editor (https://support.rstudio.com/hc/communities/public/questions/200981047-Solarized-Dark-theme-search-highlighting-hardly-visible).  In the Solarized Dark color theme, the highlighting is barely visible (see the image below).  Is this an Ace issue?  If so, how could I go about fixing it, or go about requesting a fix?

Thanks,

Alex

[Harutyun Amirjanyan]

Hi

Themes are converted from textmate  themes with https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/blob/master/tool/tmtheme.js
and usually aren't modified manually

In this case maybe rstudio uses old version of ace?,
highlight seems to be more visible on http://ajaxorg.github.io/ace-builds/kitchen-sink.html
​

[Alexander Shenkin]

Thanks for the reply, Harutyun.  The highlight color looks the same to me in the kitchen-sink page, but what's different is that the entire line gets highlighted when something is selected.  that would be good enough.  not sure what's up with RStudio - maybe they are using an old version as you say.  i'll ping them.

[Harutyun Amirjanyan]

entire line being highlighted is a "highlightSelectedLine" setting, so
old version isn't related

have you used solarized dark theme with other editors?

[Alexander Shenkin]

Hmm, so it looks the same to me then.  The highlight in Solarized Dark is *very* difficult to see (think of trying to pick out that faint highlight in a whole page of code-colored text).  Is there any way of requesting a change to the highlight color in solarized dark?  Would I have to talk to textmate about that?

In the meantime, I'll suggest the RStudio folks implement highlightSelectedLine.  They tend to highlight entire codeblocks, so it might not end up helping that much.  Getting the text highlight color fixed would be a better solution I think.

[Harutyun Amirjanyan]

Hi Alexander

i was mistaken, solarized themes were not autoconverted, they were
converted manually
and initially had darker color
i've made it lighter once in
https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/commit/3aca398f1d68acc41af768d839fd7d9ac6eb4625

rstudio still uses the old version
https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/master/src/gwt/src/org/rstudio/studio/client/workbench/views/source/editors/text/themes/solarized_dark.css#L38

> The highlight in Solarized Dark is *very* difficult to see (think of trying to pick out that faint highlight in a whole page of code-colored text).

this depends on monitor configuration, i usually keep my monitor dim,
so dark themes do not look good on it.
but if i make theme colors lighter so that they look good on my
monitor, on monitors with default settings, they will be too sharp.

> Is there any way of requesting a change to the highlight color in solarized dark? Would I have to talk to textmate about that?

official page for solarized is at
http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized, but i didn't find any mentions
about selection background color


could you try changing background color on kitchen-sink example page
to something like
.ace-solarized-dark .ace_marker-layer .ace_active-line,
.ace-solarized-dark .ace_marker-layer .ace_selection {
background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.13)!important;
}
how bright it needs to be to look good on your monitor?

[Ben White]

This is still an issue, would love to see it fixed. The highlighting is actually not correct in Ace at the moment as per ethan schoovers full documentation?