Nord theme, but better.
Arctica seeks to be entirely aesthetically compatible with Nord, but to have a much better implementation, with colors added and dropped as needed.
The Nord theme is ridiculously disorganized and the documentation is nonsensical. While the colors are great, it becomes a herculean effort to neatly integrate them into stuff.
For example, the documentation states that nord2, an "Even more brighter shade color of nord0" (Grammar 100) should be used both for highlighting text, and coloring the active line. The issue with this ridiculous approach is that the text selection becomes invisible on the currently selected line. This makes editing impossible. Strangely, this advice was actually implemented in the gedit theme, and probably a lot of other themes as well.
On the Nord theme website, you can experience a forbidden Nord color in the site background by clicking on the crescent moon to switch to dark mode. (What is a CSS media query, anyway?). The color is darker than nord0. Perhaps dark mode was deactivated by default on the site in an attempt to hide this intriguing color. I think it should be added as the 17th color and christened nord -1.
On second thought, it shouldn't. Why? Well, it seems that in an effort to keep the palette 16 colors long, Arctic Ice Studios had to include 4 dark colors, and only 3 light colors. This is bizarre, because when reading through the documentation, it seems as if they intended Polar Night and Snowstorm to be equivalents of eachother, to be used for dark mode and light mode respectively. Unfortunately, since the colors are imbalanced 4:3 (5:3 if you count nord -1) they're not exactly hot swappable.
What they couldn't do for the white colors, Arctic Ice Studios certainly made up for in the blues! Frost, the "heart palette of Nord", is composed of four slightly different shades of blue. While they are all clearly distinct colors, an extra Snow Storm color could definitely have taken the place of one.
This issue is rather simple. Terminals want 16 colors, only 4 of those being gray/white/black shades. Nord does not have dark versions of the aurora colors, thus not enough colors to theme a terminal.
This is nothing short of tragic, because Nord is probably one of the most aesthetically pleasing color palettes in existence.
Thus, this project.
0 1 2 3
A implementation of the original Polar Night colors, this time starting in a deeper key. Designed to be entirely equivalent to Arctica's own Snow Storm.
In dark themes, these colors are usually used as backgrounds. In light themes, they are used as text/icon colors.
2b303c
Background, equivalent to Arctica 4.
- As a background
- As a terminal background
- As a shadow
- To break up lighter Polar Night colors
- Do not use this color in light themes
2e3440
Secondary background, equivalent to Arctica 5, except when used as black in a terminal.
- As a secondary background
- To break up lighter Polar Night colors
- As text, icons, etc
- As the default foreground color in a terminal
3b4252
Lifted background, equivalent to Arctica 6.
- For lifted elements, such as popups, some buttons/inputs, etc
- For highlighting the current line
- For comments
- Less prominent borders, horizontal rules, etc
- Can be used for text, icons, etc with less prominence, but it is recommended that Arctica 3 be used for this purpose
4c566a
Highlight, equivalent to Arctica 7, except when used as dark gray in a terminal.
- For text highlighting/selecting
- To denote selection in general
- More prominent borders, horizontal rules, etc
- Text, icons, etc with less prominence
4 5 6 7
A implementation of the original Snow Storm colors Designed to be entirely equivalent to Arctica's own Polar Night. Unlike Polar Night, these colors are ordered from dark to light. This is intentional - all you need to do to turn on the lights is add 4.
In light themes, these colors are usually used as backgrounds. In dark themes, they are used as text/icon colors.
eceff4
Background, equivalent to Arctica 0.
- As a background
- As a terminal background
- As a shadow
- To break up darker Snow Storm colors
- Do not use this color in dark themes
d8dee9
Secondary background, equivalent to Arctica 1, except when used as white in a terminal.
- As a secondary background
- To break up darker Snow Storm colors
- As text, icons, etc
- As the default foreground color in a terminal
c2c9d6
Lifted background, equivalent to Arctica 2.
- For lifted elements, such as popups, some buttons/inputs, etc
- For highlighting the current line
- For comments
- Less prominent borders, horizontal rules, etc
- Can be used for text, icons, etc with less prominence, but it is recommended that Arctica 7 be used for this purpose
aeb7c6
Highlight, equivalent to Arctica 3, except when used as light grey in a terminal.
- For text highlighting/selecting
- To denote selection in general
- More prominent borders, horizontal rules, etc
- Text, icons, etc with less prominence
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Aurora and Frost have been melded into one section. Each of these colors has a handy dark and light version.
a8555d|bf616a
Represents a process which has failed, an error, or potentially risky functionality, such as a "discard changes and exit" button.
Should highlight git diff deletions and erroneous syntax/code.
b77763|d08770
Rarely used in UI.
Should highlight special syntax and escape characters/sequences.
cdb179|ebcb8b
Represents a process that has succeeded with warnings, or warnings in general.
Should highlight git diff modifications and regular expressions.
8ba277|a3be8c
Represents a process which has succeeded.
Should be used to highlight strings and chars, as well as git diff additions.
769b9b|8fbcbb
Should highlight classes, datatypes, and primitives.
72a1ae|88c0d0
This is the palette's primary accent color. It should be used for UI elements that need to be more visually prominent, such as a default OK button.
Should highlight declarations, functions, and function calls.
5e81ac|81a1c1
These are secondary and tertiary accent colors, respectively. They should be used foe elements that need to be visually prominent, but not as much as elements colored with Arctica 21.
Arctica 14 should highlight reserved keywords, operators, tags, units, and punctuation.
Arctica 22 should highlight pre-processor directives.
92738c|b48ead
Rarely used in UI.
Should highlight numbers, such as integers or floats.
The foreground color of selected text should change to the default foreground color.
Descriptions of syntax highlighting and UI elements refer to the lighter Aurora colors, unless otherwise noted.