Solaire mode

If only certain buffers could be so grossly incandescent.

solaire-mode is an aesthetic plugin designed to visually distinguish "real" buffers (i.e. file-visiting code buffers where you do most of your work) from "unreal" buffers (like popups, sidebars, log buffers, terminals, etc) by giving the latter a slightly different -- often darker -- background:

This plugin accomplishes this by doing two things when activated:

• solaire-mode buffer-locally remaps all the faces in solaire-mode-remap-alist. e.g. default <-> solaire-default-face, and mode-line <-> solaire-mode-line-face

  The latter faces are the (presumably) "adjusted" faces.

• solaire-global-mode will globally swap faces in solaire-mode-swap-alist IF your active theme is in solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap. Use this if you think a theme has its designated solaire-*-face colors the wrong way around.

Praise the sun.

Note:

• Uses face-remapping-alist, which other plugins may overwrite.
• Tested mainly on Emacs 25.1+
• Works in GUI and terminal Emacs (with themes that support it).
• Try jumping.

Install

Solaire-mode is available on MELPA: M-x package-install RET solaire-mode

Doom Emacs

Doom installs this package as part of the :ui doom module. No additional configuration is needed.

Configuration

Simply activate solaire-global-mode:

(solaire-global-mode +1)

Settings

• solaire-mode-real-buffer-fn (default: solaire-mode-real-buffer-p): The predicate function used to determine if a buffer is "real" or not. It takes no arguments and must return truthy for buffers where solaire-mode should not be activated in.
• solaire-mode-remap-alist: An alist mapping original faces to replacement faces, which will be buffer-locally remapped in any buffer solaire-mode is enabled in.
• solaire-mode-swap-alist: An alist mapping original faces to replacement faces, which will be swapped globally if current theme is in solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap.
• solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap (default: ()): A list of themes to swap faces in solaire-mode-swap-alist for. Can be symbols or regexps.

Jolly cooperation with other plugins

• By default, solaire-mode remaps the mode-line faces. This interferes with certain mode-line packages like telephone-line or powerline, but works fine for doom-modeline. To disable this behavior use:

  (dolist (face '(mode-line mode-line-inactive))
    (setf (alist-get face solaire-mode-remap-modeline) nil))

• It is up to themes to decide whether unreal buffers (i.e. non-file-visiting) are lighter or darker than real buffers. If you don't like their arrangement, add that theme to solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap:

  (add-to-list 'solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap 'doom-vibrant)

  Then solaire-mode will swap all the faces in solaire-mode-swap-alist (for example, swapping the default face with solaire-default-face).

  You can add a regexp to solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap to affect a family of themes, e.g.

  (add-to-list 'solaire-mode-themes-to-face-swap "^doom-")

Theme support for solaire-mode

solaire-mode will disable itself if the active theme doesn't support it, but to ensure support a theme must at least change solaire-default-face's :background. My recommendation is that it is be slightly darker or lighter than default's background.

For example doom-one (seen in the screenshot above) prefers solaire-default-face be darker than default:

Others, like doom-vibrant prefer the opposite:

For full support, themes can customize the following faces:

Face	Remapped face
solaire-default-face	default
solaire-fringe-face	fringe
solaire-line-number-face	line-number
solaire-hl-line-face	hl-line
solaire-org-hide-face	org-hide, org-indent
solaire-mode-line-face	mode-line
solaire-mode-line-inactive-face	mode-line-inactive
solaire-header-line-face	header-line

Themes that support solaire-mode out of the box

The only (known) themes to support solaire-mode are:

• doom-themes
• nano-theme
• modus-themes
• parchment
• spacemacs-theme
• stimmung-themes
• vscode-dark-plus-theme
• wilmersdorf-theme

If you know of more, feel free to PR them.