How to change the background color of a light theme?

[linwaytin]

Hi there,

The default color is great, but I sometimes want to try other colors.
The following code does not effect.
(alect-set-color 'light 'bg-1 "black")
What am I missing?
Thank you.

[alezost]

Hello! I am very sorry that I missed this issue 😊

I see that alect-set-color does not work anymore. Thank you for pointing!
I should investigate this problem.

You can change a default background manually.
Just run M-x customize-face RET default, set background there,
and press "Apply" or "Apply and Save" button (if you wish to make
it permanent).

[alezost]

It looks like something was changed in a recent Emacs version.
And I don't know if it's a bug or a feature.

When a theme is created, custom-theme-set-faces is called.
When a theme is loaded, the theme faces are read by
(get theme 'theme-settings).

Now, if I evaluate this:

(custom-theme-set-faces
 'alect-light
 '(font-lock-keyword-face
   ((((class color) (min-colors 256))
     :foreground "black" :weight bold))))

I think that font-lock-keyword-face should be changed to the black
color. However, when I evaluate this:

(cl-find-if (lambda (s)
              (eq (cadr s) 'font-lock-keyword-face))
            (get 'alect-light 'theme-settings))

I get:

(theme-face font-lock-keyword-face alect-light
            ((((type graphic))
              :foreground "#2020cc" :weight bold)))

I.e., font-lock-keyword-face was not changed, and the theme was not updated.
I have no idea why custom-theme-set-faces does not change faces anymore.

I would like to keep this issue open. Maybe someone has an idea what is
going on here. Or perhaps, it will be fixed in a future Emacs version :)

Can't remember where I saw this, but I believe you have to set custom--inhibit-theme-enable to nil now before custom-theme-set-faces will work.

[alezost]

Thank you for this info, @dm19 !

[jdtsmith]

I believe this results from the same issue I reported in #15. Basically, a compiled .elc version of say alect-light-theme is created at package install time, and load-theme prefers it. Since the theme does not dynamically consult e.g. alect-colors, any changes to that or related variables will go unnoticed.

The solution is the same: remove the compiled version. The better solution is to reconfigure the theme to consult alect-colors and related at load time, not at compile time.