https://blog.khzaw.dev/tags/themes/Recent content in Themes on khzHugoen-usSun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800https://blog.khzaw.dev/posts/ivory-themes/Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800https://blog.khzaw.dev/posts/ivory-themes/<p>I&rsquo;ve been building an Emacs theme on and off for a while, and it&rsquo;s reached the point where I use it every day. It&rsquo;s called <a href="https://github.com/khzaw/ivory-themes">Ivory</a>, and it ships as a pair: <code>ivory-light</code> and <code>ivory-dark</code>. It&rsquo;s near-monochromatic, meaning almost every color in it is a shade of gray. I&rsquo;d tried a few other monochrome themes first, kept catching on small things I didn&rsquo;t like, and eventually just rolled my own.</p> <figure><img src="https://blog.khzaw.dev/img/ivory-themes/rust-light_hu_61612afddc34d6e8.webp" alt="Rust source in the ivory-light theme, with syntax distinguished by weight and grayscale rather than color" loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1800" height="1119"><figcaption>ivory-light editing Rust. No syntax color, but the structure still reads.</figcaption></figure> <h2 id="the-case-against-syntax-color">The case against syntax color</h2> <p>Open any popular theme and look at a function body. Keywords get one color, strings another, types a third, constants a fourth, comments a fifth, and a builtin or two picks up its own accent somewhere in there. The pitch is always that color helps you parse code at a glance.</p>