Trasparency/opacity should not be a part of the theme.

[igor-petruk]

It should be a separate setting that could be applied to any theme, instead of creating transparent version like base16_transparent. Otherwise users have to customize every single theme if they want to try it on transparent terminal.

[the-mikedavis]

Since #3067, you can inherit any theme and unset the ui.background scope:

# ~/.config/helix/themes/dracula_transparent.toml
inherits = "dracula"
"ui.background" = {}

I don't like the idea of adding an extra config option for this.

[ghost]

If you still don't like the idea of adding a config option for this, how about generalizing the behavior of base16_transparent?

If someone writes

theme = "theme_transparent"

in their config.toml, the editor first looks for a file named exactly theme_transparent, if it can't find it it just runs

inherits = "theme"
"ui.background" = {}

This way people can easily get a transparent background for any theme they want just by adding _transparent at the end.
No need to fiddle with override files and no need for other config options.

[mfarrugi]

This is the first thing I ran into with setting up helix because I have tmux changing the background for the active pane.

We could add the equivalent of base16_transparent.toml for every theme instead, but at that point why not support global overrides?

[igor-petruk]

This suggestion does not work for some reason.

First the file is only detected if it is not ~/.config/helix/dracula_transparent.toml, but in themes subdirectory. I assume it is a typo. Also I use onedark, if it makes a difference.

Then the failure is "Invalid theme: 'ui.selection` required". Probably like #2247

OS - OpenBSD 7.2, helix is installed from a repo. These are the standard OS patches from the stock source - https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/editors/helix/patches

hx --version
helix 22.08.1

hx --health
Config file: /home/user/.config/helix/config.toml
Language file: default
Log file: /home/user/.cache/helix/helix.log
Runtime directory: /usr/local/share/helix/runtime
Clipboard provider: none
....

[the-mikedavis]

Ah yeah, that's a typo, it should be under ~/.config/helix/themes. I'll edit the original post.

Theme inheritance is a new feature in 22.12 but you're running on 22.08.1. It looks like OpenBSD ports hasn't updated to 22.12 yet: https://repology.org/project/helix/versions

[igor-petruk]

Alright, thanks. In that case I will attempt to just copy a theme and edit it. Thanks.

…

On Fri 9 Dec 2022, 17:25 Michael Davis, ***@***.***> wrote: Ah yeah, that's a typo, it should be under ~/.config/helix/themes. I'll edit the original post. Theme inheritance is a new feature in 22.12 but you're running on 22.08.1. It looks like OpenBSD ports hasn't updated to 22.12 yet: https://repology.org/project/helix/versions — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4740 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKZGIE3O7OPHJKN6WJHULTWMNTRZANCNFSM6AAAAAAR7SS4EU> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[aral]

Is there a way to get the transparency value from the terminal environment and apply it automatically to the background colour of whichever theme is active?

[the-mikedavis]

AFAIK there isn't a cross-terminal way to figure out how the terminal opacity is configured. Even if we could find out, there's no way to tell the terminal how opaque to draw a background color: all colors are solid. The way that transparency works for themes like base16_transparent is that the theme unsets the ui.background scope so that we don't draw a background color at all.

[andradei]

Having a setting so that's the case for every theme would solve the use case at the cost of checking this setting after loading the theme.

[ghost]

@the-mikedavis overriding a theme is good but it is hard to move between the themes while keeping the overrides. Helix's way of making changing themes so easy is great but cannot be used if the user override things.
I'd like to contribute this feature if it would be implemented. Something like an override.toml file that applies to whatever theme is active. If a user changes cursor colour or applies transparency, chances are they'd like that on every theme.

[thacer13]

@the-mikedavis overriding a theme is good but it is hard to move between the themes while keeping the overrides. Helix's way of making changing themes so easy is great but cannot be used if the user override things. I'd like to contribute this feature if it would be implemented. Something like an override.toml file that applies to whatever theme is active. If a user changes cursor colour or applies transparency, chances are they'd like that on every theme.

It's been a while, any chance this could be worked on? I'm having to make an override file for every single theme, because sometimes I can't at all tell if a theme will look good on a transparent background or not.

[pjlucy]

is there any way we can change the opacity. It's not always desired to have fully transparent background. I am using wezterm with opacity set to 0.9 but helix looks odd cause it has a full background

[andradei]

You can set the opacity on the themes themselves. The only option is transparent=true/false which is achieved by adding this on your theme file: 'ui.background' = {} which sets the background to "nothing", no color.
Do that and the terminal background will be shown, in your case it's wezterm's bg color with 0.9 opacity.

[pjlucy]

thank you!! this works