GNU ELPA - modus-themes

Report here: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2023-05-25-emacs-google-award/.

This is not a "change" per se, but it is worth documenting here. It shows how important accessibility can be in empowering people to use their computer and, in our case, to exercise their software freedoms.

The Modus themes tend to one aspect of accessibility. They do not exhaust the topic, though they should at least raise awareness about the significance of tending to the usability needs of everyone. The effort I put into documenting the themes (and my other packages) should be understood in this light as a means of helping people enjoy their software freedom by learning how to use and extend the program in question.

I have created a pair of light and dark themes that are intended for people with blue-yellow colour deficiency (tritanopia). These are modus-operandi-tritanopia (light) and modus-vivendi-tritanopia (dark). Screenshots of all the Modus themes are available on my website: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes-pictures.

The entire collection is now described in the manual as follows:

The Modus themes consist of eight themes, divided into four subgroups.

Main themes

modus-operandi is the project's main light theme, while modus-vivendi is its dark counterpart. These two themes are part of the project since its inception. They are designed to cover a broad range of needs and are, in the opinion of the author, the reference for what a highly legible "default" theme should look like.

Tinted themes

modus-operandi-tinted and modus-vivendi-tinted are variants of the two main themes. They slightly tone down the intensity of the background and provide a bit more color variety. modus-operandi-tinted has a set of base tones that are shades of light ochre (earthly colors), while modus-vivendi-tinted gives a night sky impression.

Deuteranopia themes

modus-operandi-deuteranopia and its companion modus-vivendi-deuteranopia are optimized for users with red-green color deficiency. This means that they do not use red and green hues for color-coding purposes, such as for diff removed and added lines. Instead, they implement colors that are discernible by users with deueteranopia or deuteranomaly (mostly yellow and blue hues).

Tritanopia themes

modus-operandi-tritanopia and its counterpart modus-vivendi-tritanopia are optimized for users with blue-yellow color deficiency. The idea is the same as with the deuteranopia variants: color coding relies only on hues that are accessible to people with tritanopia or tritanomaly, namely, shades of red and cyan.

The new palette subset improves the contrast of all the relevant colours when presented side-by-side. These are most notably used by the org-habit consistency graph, which is displayed in the Org agenda. The deuteranopia and tritanopia themes have their own bespoke … …