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0.7.0

Modus Operandi and Modus Vivendi version 0.7.0

By Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com> on 2020-03-30

This entry documents the changes since version 0.6.0 (2020-03-01).  The
present release is the largest to date containing 110 commits.

All changes conform with the primary objective of this project, which is
conformance with the WCAG AAA accessibility standard for colour
contrast.  This represents a minimum contrast ratio of 7:1 between a
given combination of foreground and background colours.

All customisation options mentioned herein are off ('nil') by default.
The project's policy is to offer such features on an "opt-in" basis.
Refer to the README or each theme's source code for the names of these
user-facing symbols.

Major refinements to existing face groups
-----------------------------------------

+ The headline feature of this release is a refined set of colours for
  visualising version-control-system differences ("diffs").  The new
  colours are less intense than before and are designed to better convey
  the meaning of the constructs they apply to.  Affected face groups are
  those of 'magit' and 'diff-mode'.  A future release will assess how
  similar packages, such as 'ediff', can benefit from this work.

+ The other major set of changes concerns the colours that apply to
  fringes (see 'fringe-mode').  A new customisation option allows for a
  distinct background for the fringes (courtesy of Anders Johansson in
  commit 80fb704).  The default uses the same colours as the main
  buffer's background.  Building on this effort, fringe indicators, such
  as those of 'flycheck' now benefit from an entirely new set of
  background+foreground colour combinations that are designed
  specifically for the fringes.

+ A new customisation option allows users to render 'org-mode' source
  blocks in a distinct background colour.  The default is to use the
  same background as the rest of the buffer.  When this option is
  enabled, the background colour for the beginning and end line of such
  blocks is extended to the end of the window (using the ':extend t'
  attribute for >= Emacs 27).  Older Emacs versions already extend to
  the end of the window.

+ The colour combination that shows the matching parentheses or
  delimiters has been reviewed.  The commit is fairly small and the
  changes are immediately noticeable only to the most discerning of
  eyes.  Still, the considerations informing the review imposed a
  rigorous method.  Rather than summarise the findings, interested
  readers are advised to refer to commit af3a327: it offers a
  comprehensive analysis on the matter.

Added support for packages (A-Z)
--------------------------------

+ auctex/tex
+ bm
+ buffer-expose
+ centaur-tabs
+ cider (tentative, feedback is much appreciated)
+ csv-mode
+ dynamic-ruler
+ ebdb
+ elfeed-score
+ flyspell-correct
+ fold-this
+ freeze-it
+ frog-menu
+ git-walktree
+ helm-switch-shell
+ highlight-defined
+ highlight-escape-sequences (hes-mode)
+ highlight-numbers
+ highlight-thing
+ hl-todo
+ ioccur
+ julia
+ kaocha-runner
+ markup-faces (adoc-mode)
+ multiple-cursors
+ num3-mode
+ org-roam
+ org-superstar
+ org-treescope
+ outline-minor-mode
+ paradox
+ rainbow-identifiers
+ rg
+ ripgrep
+ sallet (tentative, feedback is much appreciated)
+ selectrum
+ sesman
+ side-notes
+ skewer-mode
+ stripes
+ symbol-overlay
+ syslog-mode
+ vc-annotate (C-x v g)
+ volatile-highlights
+ web-mode
+ yaml-mode

Note about VC-annotate
----------------------

Quoting from the relevant note in the project's README:

    Due to the unique way `vc-annotate' (`C-x v g') applies colours,
    support for its background mode (`vc-annotate-background-mode') is
    disabled at the theme level.

    Normally, such a drastic measure should not belong in a theme:
    assuming the user's preferences is bad practice.  However, it has
    been deemed necessary in the interest of preserving colour contrast
    accessibility while still supporting a useful built-in tool.

    If there actually is a way to avoid such a course of action, without
    prejudice to the accessibility standard of this project, then please
    report as much (or contribute as per the information in the
    Contributing section).

Overview of refinements to already supported packages
-----------------------------------------------------

In this section the notion of "dedicated colours" pertains to colour
values that are reserved for special faces.  They are never used for
syntax highlighting or other common scenaria.

+ Define new background colours for fringe indicators (as noted in the
  first section).  Apply them to 'bm', 'diff-hl', 'git-gutter',
  'flycheck' fringe indicators.  All such indicators are now made more
  visible and work better with the new customisation option for
  rendering the fringes in a distinct background.

+ Define dedicated colours for tab-like interfaces.  Currently these
  apply only to 'centaur-tabs'.  The intention is to eventually
  implement them to the tab modes that ship with Emacs 27, as well as
  any other package that offers such functionality.

+ Define dedicated colours for actions that "mark" items.  Use them in
  'dired', 'proced', 'gnus'. An accented background is combined with an
  accented foreground.  The intention is to make the underlying
  construct distinct even under circumstances where the mark's
  background changes, such as when it intersects with 'hl-line-mode' or
  'stripes': the accented foreground will still be recognisable as a
  colour that differs from the main foreground.  The use of a bold font
  weight further reinforces the intended action.

+ Refine 'dired' faces to account for the new "mark" styles.
  Directories are no longer rendered in a bold weight.

+ Tweak the colours used in the built-in 'diary' and 'calendar' for
  better usability.

+ Tweak 'deadgrep' colours for consistency with packages that offer
  similar functionality.

+ Tweak 'compilation-line-number' in the interest of consistency with
  similar interfaces.

+ Use a more appropriate colour for 'trailing-whitespace'.  It now is a
  colour value that was designed specifically as a background.

+ Expand 'fountain-mode' support by covering its new heading faces.  The
  headings will be presented in larger font sizes, or using proportional
  fonts, should the user enable the relevant theme customisation options
  (see README or source code).

+ Remove bold weight from matching parentheses in 'show-paren-mode' and
  'smartparens'.  The temporarily applied bold weight can cause
  misalignments while using certain fonts.  Also apply the new colours
  for matching delimiters, as documented in the first section.

+ Refine 'outline-mode' colours to be consistent with those of Org's
  headings.

+ Several usability and colour refinements for 'helm' and related
  packages in that milieu.

+ Remove box property from emphasis markers in the mode line.  It
  created inconsistencies with other faces.

+ Refine the colours used in Magit logs, `change-log', `log-view'.  They
  are meant to be more distinct from their context, without drawing too
  much attention to themselves.

+ Minor internal fixes for indentation and the like.

Miscellaneous changes and concluding remarks
--------------------------------------------

+ Add section in the README which documents a legal requirement for all
  potential non-trivial code contributions: the need to assign copyright
  to the Free Software Foundation.  The Modus Themes are now distributed
  via the official GNU ELPA repository and copyright over them is
  assigned to the FSF.

+ Add CHANGELOG file which consolidates all tagged release notes such as
  this one.

+ Add new screen shots to the relevant Wiki page, together with detailed
  descriptions on what is being demonstrated:
  https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/wikis/Screenshots

Special thanks to Manuel Uberti for reporting several issues and
offering feedback where appropriate.  I was able to add support for lots
of new packages.  While a few among the already supported face groups
underwent tweaks and refinements.  The 'helm' ecosystem benefited the
most.

Thanks to Anders Johansson for the patch that introduced the
fringes-related customisation option.  It inspired me to reconsider the
use of this particular area of the interface, which eventually led to
the barrage of commits that refashioned the fringe indicators.  A major
win overall.

Thanks to Jonathan Otsuka for fixing an error of mine on the naming of
some symbols.  My apologies for missing it: I will be more careful from
now on.

Note: both patches were small, requiring no copyright assignment.
Larger contributions are always welcome, though make sure you read the
section in the README with regard to assigning copyright to the Free
Software Foundation.

Version 0.6.0

This release contains lots of refinements and additions.

Let me start with an administrative point: I have completed the process
of assigning my copy rights to the Free Software Foundation.  This
covers every contribution I make to GNU Emacs.  In practice, it means
that the Modus themes can now be included in the official ELPA archive
and theoretically be shipped with Emacs itself.  The ELPA inclusion is
ongoing.  Once it is completed, I will update the docs accordingly.

The administrative change has no effect on the way this project is
handled.  I still am the developer/maintainer and will continue to
improve things further.  If you still have questions, feel free to
contact me: https://protesilaos.com/contact

Moving on to the changes since version 0.5.0 (2020-01-26).

Added support for:

+ alert
+ apropos (built-in)
+ dap-mode
+ deft
+ dim-autoload
+ dired-git
+ enhanced-ruby-mode
+ gbd-mi.el (built-in library)
+ helm-ls-git
+ helm-xref
+ imenu-list
+ jira (org-jira)
+ js2-mode
+ jupyter
+ org-pomodoro
+ origami
+ rmail (built-in)
+ vc-print-log (built-in)
+ window-divider-mode (built-in)
+ xref (built-in)

Refinements to existing faces:

+ A new subset of "nuanced" accent colours has been introduced.  These
are named {red,green,yellow,blue,magenta,cyan}-nuanced.  Their purpose
is to be used in contexts where lots of structured information is
presented to the user, but each component does not need to draw too much
attention to itself (e.g. Org's metadata).  As always, their contrast
ratio is designed to always be >= 7:1 relative to the backgrounds they
may be combined with.

+ Greatly improve the support for Gnus, even though most changes are
subtle and are made in the interest of consistency.  The group levels
now make use of the "nuanced" palette where appropriate (to denote
levels of lower importance).

+ Several refinements for Org, including the use of "nuanced" colours
for various metadata tags.  The agenda headers will now be scaled
appropriately and use a variable-pitch font if the user sets the
relevant customisation values of the theme they are using (check the
documentation in each theme file or the repo's README).

+ Lots of refinements for Helm.  Some of these were introduced to align
the overall aesthetic with equivalent metaphors in Ivy.  Others are
meant to improve the styles of the headers and make various constructs
consistent with their variants in the Helm ecosystem but also with their
non-Helm counterparts (such as xref file names with and without Helm,
but also with Helm's grep).

+ Improve the colours of buttons in contexts such as M-x customize.
This is especially noticeable in modus-vivendi-theme (the dark theme)
where the buttons are a darker shade of grey rather than the original
lighter one.

+ Keycast now uses styles that are more consistent with the overall
aesthetic of the Modus themes.  This means that the mode line indicators
are blue-ish (blue is generally used for highlights in the mode line,
but also when hovering over an item with the mouse pointer).  The pseudo
button effect (colours + 3d) has been removed in favour of a flat look,
in line with the flatness of the mode line itself.  Whereas before the
keycast faces where designed to be consistent with the package's
defaults.

There were also a few minor refinements for:

+ calendar and diary
+ icomplete
+ mm-uu-extract
+ nobreak-hyphen and nobreak-space
+ org-habit
+ tooltip-mode

Finally, the Commentary section of each theme has been greatly expanded.
It now includes the user-facing customisation options and the complete
list of supported packages.

Version 0.5.0

This release contains support for several new packages and lots of
refinements for existing ones.  A lot of work went into making the
themes more robust by reviewing the inheritance of styles from one
face group to another (in general, the ':inherit' property should not
be used frivolously).  Several subtle changes were made to the colour
palette of both themes to ensure consistency, enable more possible
combinations, and avoid potential ambiguity under certain potential
circumstances.

Overall, this release gives me confidence that the themes have reached
a fairly stable state.  What follows is an overview of the changes
since version 0.4.0 (2020-01-02).

Added support for:

+ equake
+ flymake
+ focus
+ fountain (fountain-mode)
+ git-lens
+ git-timemachine
+ hi-fill-column
+ highlight-blocks
+ info-colors
+ lsp-mode
+ lsp-ui
+ proced (built-in)
+ regexp-builder (built-in)
+ suggest

Refinements:

+ The header line uses its own dedicated colours.  Several changes
  were made in 'eww', 'info', 'elfeed', 'magit', 'flycheck' to make
  sure that any accent value that appears there conforms with the
  overarching accessibility objective of the Modus themes (contrast
  ratio of >= 7:1, else WCAG AAA).
+ 'ivy' no longer uses a box style for the current line, as that was
  not always reliable.  Appropriate colours are used instead.
+ 'org-mode' blocks use a foreground value that distinguishes their
  opening and closing tags from source code comments.
+ The 'org-ellipsis' face was configured to always inherit the looks
  of its respective heading or element, rather than have its own
  excessive styling.
+ 'paren-match' has colours that are designed specifically for it.
  This is done to retain their utility while making sure they are not
  mistaken for some other type of feedback.
+ 'magit' has explicit styles for the mode line process indicators,
  instead of inheriting from another face.  The intention is to use
  foreground values that are designed specifically for use on the mode
  line (the minimum contrast ratio requirement).
+ 'erc' faces have been thoroughly reviewed in the interest of better
  usability.  Its mode line indicators now use appropriate colours.
+ The faces of the 'messages' library have been thoroughly reviewed.
  This affects various email interfaces, but also 'elfeed' entry
  metadata headings.
+ 'whitespace-mode' no longer has a newline character that stands out.
  That kind of emphasis was not necessary, given that the symbol used
  is a dollar sign, which is already far more visible than a mid dot.
+ 'font-lock' (generic syntax highlighting) has better colour
  combinations for regexp grouping constructs.
+ 'rainbow-delimiters' was given its missing base error face.
+ 'git-commit' comment action uses a slightly different foreground
  value than before to better match its context.
+ 'isearch' and 'query-replace' use colours that properly denote each
  action's utility.
+ 'visual-regexp' has been reviewed to make the matching groups more
  distinct from each other.
+ 'occur' and any other buffer that relies on the 'match' face can now
  benefit from the new colour combinations, in that its results cannot
  be confused for the active 'isearch' or 'query-replace' or even
  their lazily highlighted results (or, indeed, of any other search
  tool).
+ 'company' uses faces for its search feedback that are consistent
  with other search metaphors.
+ Emacs 27's new ':extend' property is only implemented where
  necessary (note that the latest release is version 26.3).

Version 0.4.0

This is an overview of the changes since version 0.3.0 (2019-12-25).

Add support for:

	+ ert
	+ flycheck-indicator
	+ mentor
	+ mu4e-conversation
	+ powerline-evil
	+ telephone-line
	+ vc (built-in version control)

Refinements to already-supported packages:

	+ company-mode (several refinements)
	+ doom-modeline (major review)
	+ helm (several tweaks)
	+ hl-line-mode (use unique background)
	+ ivy (improve matching line)
	+ line-number-mode (minor tweaks)
	+ markdown-mode (comprehensive expansion)
	+ mode-line (more appropriate styles for the highlight)
	+ powerline (minor tweaks)
	+ region (use unique background)
	+ swiper (improve matching line in main window)
	+ whitespace-mode (several refinements)
    + mu4e (tweak mu4e-modeline-face for consistency)

Miscellaneous:

	+ Fix actual and potential problems with cursor faces that would
      distort the use of appropriate background and foreground colours.
      The documentation stipulates that the `cursor' face cannot be
      inherited by other faces, due to its peculiar nature of only
      recognising the background colour.
	+ Add support for more bold constructs in code.  As with all such
      options, it is disabled by default, expecting the user to
      explicitly opt in.
	+ Declare additional custom faces.  Only meant for internal use.
	+ Subtle refinements to "active" colour values in both Modus
      Operandi and Modus Vivendi.  These mostly concern the mode line
      (with a few special exceptions), where emphasis has been placed on
      the need to provide greater contrast between accent values that
      can be used there.
	+ Minor documentation refinements.

Release version 0.3.0

Overview of changes since 0.2.0 (2019-12-18):

+ Add support for the following packages:

  * apt-sources-list
  * calfw
  * counsel-css
  * counsel-notmuch
  * counsel-org-capture-string
  * cov
  * disk-usage
  * evil-visual-mark-mode
  * geiser
  * keycast
  * org-journal
  * org-noter
  * paren-face
  * powerline
  * vc
  * xah-elisp-mode

+ Explicitly style the following packages (these were already covered,
  in terms of the colours they used, but are now targeted directly):

  * calendar
  * counsel
  * cursor
  * package (M-x list-packages)

+ Minor tweaks to face groups:

  * dired
  * compile

+ Fixes and refinements:

  * Documentation strings will now inherit the option for slanted
    constructs (off by default -- see the README about all the user
    options).
  * Comment delimiters have the same styles as the body of the comment
    to avoid inconsistencies when the option for slanted constructs is
    enabled.
  * The line number that is displayed in the compile log is now
    correctly styled.
  * Removed duplicate entries for ivy-remote and added ivy-separator.
  * Ensure that the minibuffer prompt is always above the minimum
    contrast ratio of 7:1, by using a more appropriate shade of cyan.
  * Properly reference a couple of variables in Modus Vivendi.

+ Internal adjustments:

  * Decouple the core dired faces from those of external packages.
  * Same for org and org-recur.

+ Minor documentation updates.

Fix version in files.

For the release notes, refer to version 0.2.0:

https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/modus-themes/-/tags/0.2.0

Release version 0.2.0

Overview of changes since 0.1.0 (2019-12-09):

+ Comprehensive review of `org-mode' faces.  The use of colour should
now be more consistent with the semantics of each element.  These should
also respond better to a variety of combinations, such as when the user
has `hl-line-mode' enabled.  The agenda view is the greatest beneficiary
of this review.

+ Make `mu4e' mode line faces consistent with other elements that may be
placed on the mode line.

+ Make `gnus' header name/subject more distinct.

+ Several minor refinements to `ivy' and its extensions.

+ General usability refinements to `ace-window'.

+ Minor review of `elfeed' styles, in the interest of improving the
contrast between the elements.

+ Add support for:
  + `persp-mode' (fork of the already supported `perspective')
  + `dashboard'
  + `evil-mode'
  + `evil-goggles'
  + `ruler-mode'

Version 0.1.0

First stable release of Modus Operandi and Modus Vivendi.