Help! I've fallen down the theme-ing rabbit hole

Will

Four questions really.
1. Is there somewhere documentation on the theme attributes? What is available to be themed and syntax?
2. What is a "referenceDefinition"?
3. Why won't my entry for "horizontalRule" change color, I copied the lines from another theme where the color was different?
4. What is wrong with this - Considering putting links in a codeBlock so I can specify a monospaced font (to achieve Sasha's TOC style) and my editor default font San Fransico a variable-spaced font.

Basil

As a fellow themeoholic, I can feel your pain. It is only after you have spent 90 minutes trying to find just the right shade of blue that you know, you have hit rock bottom.

1. Is there somewhere documentation on the theme attributes? What is available to be themed and syntax?

Yes, fortunately there is:
https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/The-Archive-Themes/blob/master/Syntax.md

2. What is a "referenceDefinition"?

It's "unused at the moment", according to the link above.

3. Why won't my entry for "horizontalRule" change color, I copied the lines from another theme where the color was different?

If I remember correctly, the last time that I updated the PrettyFunctional themes, the color setting for horizontalRule was also not honored. I vaguely remember first thinking that it did work, because with another theme, the horizontal lines did change color, but then I realized that it was because of something else, something like four stars being interpreted as bold and bold having a separate color in that theme.

It just occurred to me to search the forums for "horizontalRule", which made me find an old bug report that I had filed about this issue in the private The Archive Beta subforum and apparently completely forgotten about since. The bug is still open, so there is a good chance that my explanation above is still correct and horizontalRule is not used in any of the themes.

4. What is wrong with this - Considering putting links in a codeBlock so I can specify a monospaced font (to achieve Sasha's TOC style) and my editor default font San Fransico a variable-spaced font.

Not only is there nothing wrong with this, you are in fact combining the best of two worlds with this approach: a very nice and pleasant-to-read variable width font (bonus points for picking San Francisco!) for most of your text, and a monospaced font for anything that requires spatial layouting like tables, TOCs, programming code, etc. I have written more extensively about this topic in the PrettyFunctional (Regular) thread, if you are interested.

nickmilo22

Glad someone with the knowledge and wisdom of @Basil responded to @Will . Good stuff!

Will

Thanks so much for the schooling on themes. I too have spent inordinate amounts of time choosing the right shade of blue. We're card-carrying members of TA (themeoholics anonymous). The PrettyFunctional themes were my starting point. Great examples. @Basil, thanks.

betteportergal

Hi everyone!
New to the forum and no coding experience really, but I was wondering: Is there a way to adjust a theme so that it displays tag links and wiki links in different colorways?

orderinthecourts

A reference definition is the bit of text you put at the bottom of your markdown to define a reference. For example, for the link [google][1], "1" is the reference, and [1]: http://google.com/ is the reference definition.

Will

@betteportergal said:
Hi everyone!
New to the forum and no coding experience really, but I was wondering: Is there a way to adjust a theme so that it displays tag links and wiki links in different colorways?

@betteportergal, this is possible through changing the theme you are working in. Likely the software will have a theme that will satisfy your needs.

Assuming you are using The Archive, Go to Preferences, then Themes. There you can see what theme is active. Try different ones and see if they appear as you want. Have a note with links in it visible when you start and you will see the changes in real-time and can settle on the theme you like. Hopefully, this will be enough to get you what you want.

To customize a theme is a bit more complex but doable. From the themes window pick "Open Theme Manager" then pick "Open Theme Directory". You'll be presented with a directory listing of your themes in the .json file format. I'd recommend selecting the one with the name that matches the theme that is the closest to the one you like and making a copy of it. Give it a new name in the same format as the other themes. Xxxx.theme.json Modify only that one. Once modified you'll have to close and reopen the preference window to select your new custom theme to make it active.

Edit this file using the hex code for the color of the line near the bottom.

"link": {
    "color": "#555555"
},

Use an online color converter that will convert colors to hex.

You'll be tempted to make other changes and this is what is meant by "Help! I've fallen down the theme-ing rabbit hole".

betteportergal

Thanks a lot, @Will! I managed to customize the theme (fun and somewhat addictive indeed!) but it turns out that both tags and wikilinks are marked as "links" in the theme. Do you know whether there is there some kind of workaround to distinguish between the two link types?

Will

@betteportergal, I do not know of any alternative formatting options. This may come about when @ctietze implements the "referenceDefinition" theming option. Seems like "links" would refer to [[]] (double) and "referenceDefinition" would control the look of the contents of [] (single).

ctietze

At the moment, the options are limited. When I work on the Markdown component, this might change though, so please be patient for a couple of months longer