To Modus or Not to Modus?

At some point yesterday I stumbled upon this video from David of System Crafters explaining how to customize the famed Modus themes. I want to use these themes Ebecause they are so detailed and thoughtful, but I disagree with the main idea behind them: the sharply contrasting colors.

On the other hand, the video demonstrated the depth of detail these themes go into. I haven’t checked all the themes available for Emacs, but I don’t doubt that there are no other themes that come close in terms of attention to detail and customization as the Modus themes. They are in a league of their own.

After watching parts of the video and browsing the Modus themes manual, I came to the same conclusion I have before. I already have my preferred colors, and I adjusted my theme according to these and my soft-contrast principles.

The Modus theme did inspire me and made me consider modifying my theme further and including a light mode as well. This is a good idea especially on the laptop in well-lit rooms. Then again, the rest of my Linux theme is set to dark mode. Emacs’s bright theme will stand out like a flashlight.

So do I really need it? If a certain yellow is too close to the orange somewhere in org-mode or if an emphasis somewhere is not good enough, I tweak the theme’s el file to my liking. It’s not pretty and the code is broken by my comments everywhere, but it works.

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