Terminal color for bright black (8)

[pkazmier]

I'm curious about your thoughts on the bright black color for terminals? In my personal configuration, I've had to change it as I think the brown is a bit too dark and thus hard to read.

For example, here is htop:

And here is an example with zsh syntax highlighting showing a potential completion:

I find both hard to read, so I changed my ghostty config to use the muted fg color for color 8. It's brighter and IMO fits better with the oasis lagoon palette than the brown. I actually struggle a lot with the browns in oasis lagoon (in particular the search bg), so maybe this is just my own bias.

Here are the same two screenshots:

[uhs-robert]

Great question! I have been debating on bright_black for some time now. Should it be black? Or should it lean into the theme?

I went for brown as a pseudo "off-black" option. But, in your example screens, it looks awfully muddy and difficult to read, which isn't what I intended. Upon review, the terminal brown has an extremely bad contrast ratio on lagoon (1.94) vs muted (3.0). This makes it completely unreadable (so, if we do decide to keep brown, then that needs to be fixed on a per-theme basis).

My train of thought is that bright_black should be subtle and recede into the background. fg.muted does this the best, while the brown stands out a bit with a contrasting color.

I kind of like the contrast of brown, but I also really like the subtlety of fg.muted. I will need to marinate on this one for a while longer, haha. Now I am starting to lean toward fg.muted! Let me know what you think. Here is what bright_black would like if the contrast were fixed for comparison:

Htop

Code Completion

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I also just updated the plugin and extras to use the corrected contrast ratio bright_black color as well. This had to be done on a per-theme basis (line 37 of each /color_palette/oasis_{theme}). This puts a quick band-aid on the bug while we consider what the best option is for the future.

[pkazmier]

I'll give it try today at work to see how I like the new "brown" and let it stew for a bit (since we're both thinking food) 😄

[uhs-robert]

@pkazmier after some work yesterday... I am leaning more toward fg.muted. I agree, it tends to complement the theme better. Makes we wonder where the brown belongs in the theme, if at all.

I am also wondering if we ought to make the same sort of change with black and make it bg.core or bg.mantle, as well as opposed to a generic black.

Either way, I want to say thanks again for all your input and help. Making color decisions without any feedback is... challenging to say the least, haha.

[pkazmier]

Yeah, I tried to give brown a chance yesterday, but couldn't get into it, and I was just about to switch back when I saw your message. As you say, I do struggle with the brownish colors. Another brown that has my ire is Search in lagoon. Any thoughts about that one? Re:black in terminal, yeah, that would make sense to me as well. And, thanks for listening to me 😄

[uhs-robert]

And, thanks for listening to me 😄

Haha anytime! Same to you. I tend to ramble.

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In that case, I just swapped to fg.muted for bright_black and bg.core for black globally!

I am also on the fence about "Nontext"; it could be fg.muted as well. The only place where I think the brown might be kept is in LspInlayHints (for distinction between hint vs comment).

• It could also be a different color, like gray.
• Or use fg.muted and give inlays a darker/lighter background to separate them more clearly.

What do you think?

NonText

LspInlayHints

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As for the search.bg, it is supposed to be an orange but dark orange looks a bit brown. I am open to swapping that one out.

Are there any visual.bg's that you think would work?

Here are some options I have been playing with:

Current Orange

Tweaked Orange (Attempt to make less brown: #80543D)

⭐ Sky Blue (Bright primary)

This might be my favorite. I actually like this as an idea universally as well (i.e., use the dark primary color as search.bg, use the bright complementary as match.bg).

Blue (Dark primary)

[pkazmier]

I think keeping NonText as is (brown) makes sense, because it does stand out differently from the rest of the theme. I think it's a great choice for non-text elements on the screen. It's very clear that color is different from the rest of the theme, so its use for non-text items help those clearly stand apart from the rest.

In terms of the search colors, I really like that Sky Blue Bright option as well. It looks very nice. I was testing another variant where I would not define a fg color for Search. I like the look of it as it looks like the code has just been highlighted (similar to visual mode selections), but I'm not sure if there would be enough contrast for you. In either case, I much prefer either over the current burnt orange in use now.

Edit: Re: my suggestion, there definitely isn't enough contrast without setting the fg. For example, if the searched text was a comment, it's too washed out. So that would mean finding a darker bg color, but that defeats the purpose of highlight other matches on the screen visually. With that said, I think your suggestion is the perfect choice.