RE: Darkening font-lock colors

[Drew Adams]

> Maybe, but a good default is also good to have.

Yes, a _good_ default. My point was that if you start trading off between
accessibility, usability, and who-knows-what-else, the result might not be so
good.

I certainly agree that themes are not the place to start, and that we should try
for good defaults. You, not I, pointed out the conflicts between different sets
of criteria. My point was that you will respect none of those sets if you try a
half-way compromise (probably).

> I think jumping into themes right away would just prevent 
> good defaults.

Dunno if it would prevent anything, but I agree that good defaults come first.
 
> > 2. FWIW, I am against having both foregrounds and 
> backgrounds defined for faces
> > such as font-lock faces, that is, for the default values. 
> Distracting & ugly.
> 
> I think it is helpful that makes for exampel comments stand out a bit
> as I said because it holds those pieces of text together and a bit
> apart from other text. This is the same use they often have in a web
> page.

We will agree to disagree. One person's stands-out-nicely is another person's
annoying distraction.

> However the color difference must be small otherwise the text with a
> background color will perhaps stand out to much. I think there is a
> balance between standing out too much or too little.
> 
> In what way do you think it distracting?

See above.

> > Also, they look odd when over trailing whitespace.
> 
> I see no visual problem there. Can you tell me what you see?

It won't convince you, but even without trailing whitespace, I find large chunks
of faces with fg and bg to look odd against the page background. It's like
putting boxes around each line of text. If it looks good to you, fine. Just one
opinion.

A face that has the same background (i.e. no background) as the page looks like
text on the page. A face that has no foreground looks like highlighting. Both
are good.

A face that has a foreground and a background that is different from the page
looks like a boxed heading. And a chunk of such text doesn't look like a
rectangular text box. It looks like a set of Lego blocks, with varying right
edges due to different line lengths.

FWIW.