v2 feedback

[will-stone]

I'd like to have an issue thread for general feedback on the now released v2 beta. I'll tag all the contributors, pull-requesters, and issue loggers. Please download the latest version of Plastic and switch to v2 beta from the theme selection preferences. Check the changelog for details.

@pkazmier
@kayteh
@xgz123
@ivancuric
@krokofant
@jstheoriginal
@leiserfg

Thanks 😘

[krokofant]

@will-stone Where's the changelog? 🙈

[ivancuric]

I miss the syntax highlighting in escaped template literals.

[will-stone]

@krokofant go to Plastic in VScode > Changelog tab. Or see CHANGELOG.md in this repo.

@ivancuric You mean not turning ${ green? That was to keep the scope specificity low. I wasn't sure about that at first either but I've actually found it a nicer way to visually digest now. After all, the brackets are punctuation and the colour is consistent with all the other punctuation. I think it works well when you have larger block of text:

[ivancuric]

You're right, looks definetly better in larger blocks.

[jstheoriginal]

I’ll be honest. I find this colour scheme harder on my eyes (I have vision issues with lower contrasts), specifically the blue. In v1 it was more of a brighter electric blue, while in v2 it’s darker and more muted against the background so it’s harder for me to read.

[will-stone]

Agreed. I changed the blue yesterday and am not enjoying it today. Your comparison is incorrect though: the new blue is called Havelock Blue (check config/colours.mjs for all the colours and their names/hex-codes).

Original Plastic Cornflower Blue: #61AFEF
Solid Cornflower Blue: #6495ED
Current v2 Havelock Blue: #5590D9

It would have been nice to find a named blue closer to the original, but I've tried quite a few and none of them feel quite right. I'm happy to revert this to original Plastic's blue. How are you finding the other colours?

[jstheoriginal]

Ah ok makes sense as the blue did seem even darker than the comparison was showing, so that explains it. I’m not sure if making sure the colours used have an actual name be a criteria makes the most sense, since the most important thing is that it displays well.

I’ll let you know on the rest once I can use it more. I noticed he green wasn’t as bright, but it’s not a huge change so should be fine.

Thanks Will!

[will-stone]

Oh, I totally agree; colours for the sake of naming is just silly, but I thought it provided a good base. I really like the text (which is also the punctuation colour) and variable colours now so they will definitely be staying. Maybe I'll put the colourful colours (if that makes sense) back to v1 colours but keep the rest. The main upgrade of v2 is the build and config system, anyway.

[jstheoriginal]

https://www.colorhexa.com/61afef

That site calls it “soft blue”.

[xgz123]

v2 is good. i hope the punctuation one also get updated too.

[will-stone]

@xgz123 read the changelog for info on the punctuation theme.

@jstheoriginal Thanks. Soft Blue seems to cover quite a big range on that site but I do like finding new tools like this. I'll probably stick with Chirag for the naming though, as Whiskey is called "Slightly desaturated orange" on that site 😆

[will-stone]

v.1.11.1 released which uses v1 syntax colours (shouldn't have messed with perfection!). I'm going to have a think about how this can be set-up to make it even easier for Plastic Forks to be made (then you'll get the de-prioritised punctuation back 👍 ).

[jstheoriginal]

perfection indeed.

[tri-nga]

Really love Plastic v1.
I use the deprioritised punctuation and is almost perfect.
Some nights I feel like a darker background would be better for my eyes tho.

I'm having trouble finding a light dimmed theme with such perfection.

[will-stone]

Hi @dok42 The workbench (the background, text, border colours etc.) will be the same across all versions of Plastic. This is the bit that's fiddly and fairly time-consuming to keep on top of (as Microsoft release new theme-able areas). Therefore, my thinking for variations of Plastic (Plastic Forks) will be that themers will only need to change a set of syntax colours (that I've pre-categorised) and not have to worry about the rest (see https://github.com/will-stone/plastic/blob/master/theme.yaml for a sneak peek but bear in mind it's subject to change). To get to your point, the background colour will remain the same. Has your laptop got a night mode? For example, Mac's have Night Shift, Windows have Night Light. This will raise the temperature of the screen and save your eyes. I find this a nicer solution as I switch to the white-background of my browser.

[will-stone]

Oh, and that theme file doesn't build yet, so please don't anyone get too excited and start making Plastic Forks just yet 😀

[will-stone]

New version of v2 beta released. This includes the deprioritsed-punctuation variation.

I've gotten quite far with the compiler, please have a play but don't publish any themes just yet until I've ironed out the kinks. Here's the process so far; this is a first draft at instructions for creating your own Plastic Fork:

• Fork and clone the repo (to your vscode extensions folder so you can test it)
• (there will be an init script here, that I haven't written yet, that will clear out any meta info that's specific to my version of Plastic: publisher ID, display name etc. We can combine it with the next step?)
• run yarn to install dependencies
• open theme.yaml and follow the instructions provided by the comments
• run yarn build to compile normal and deprioritised-punctuation themes into out/
• (in the future, the build script will update package.json automatically, but in the meantime you'll need to update the contributes.themes.labels manually with your theme name)

Do not edit anything in src/.

I'm thinking of having a gallery for Plastic Forks on the homepage. To qualify, the theme needs to have only edited the theme.yaml file. I'm going to create a couple once I've finished with the build and init scripts.

Please let me know if you have comments on this proposed process; I may have missed something glaringly obvious or something may not seem right. Let me know in a comment on this thread.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes this early version for a whirl.

Last but not least, let me know of any comments about the v2 themes themselves. All being well, I'll probably publish them tomorrow evening; now that the colours used are v1 colours again, I will be overwriting the legacy themes, so this really is your last chance to speak up if anything is bothering you about the new ones.

[will-stone]

v2 released!

I've used the softer blue colour for secondary, the bright blue was a little too harsh.

I've just found this extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rafamel.subtle-brackets I highly recommend it. I've set these options:

"subtleBrackets.styles": {
    "global": {
      "borderColor": "#61AFEF",
      "borderWidth": "2px",
      "borderStyle": "none none solid none"
    }
},

Which changes the bracket matcher border to a little underline: