Hints Kitten highlights bright are invisible in light themes

[dderjoel]

Describe the bug

When using the hints kitten, pressing CTRL+SHIFT+P>F, the files are highlighted.
When using a light theme, the highlighted bright color is illegible.
This does not happen with a dark theme

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Select a light theme such as "Solarized Light"
2. ls in some directory
3. press CTRL+SHIFT+P>F
4. see that matching files are hinted bright and one cannot read it.
5. repeat the process with a dark theme and the highlights are readable.

Screenshots

Environment details

kitty 0.33.1 created by Kovid Goyal
Linux arch4 6.8.2-arch2-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:06:35 +0000 x86_64
Arch Linux 6.8.2-arch2-1 (/dev/tty)

Running under: X11
Frozen: False
Paths:
  kitty: /usr/bin/kitty
  base dir: /usr/lib/kitty
  extensions dir: /usr/lib/kitty/kitty
  system shell: /bin/zsh
Loaded config files:
  /home/joel/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

Config options different from defaults:
enable_audio_bell       False
input_delay             5
repaint_delay           20
shell_integration       frozenset({'no-complete'})
Added shortcuts:
	ctrl+- →  change_font_size all -2.0
	ctrl+= →  change_font_size all +2.0
Changed shortcuts:
	kitty_mod+p > f →  kitten hints --type path, kitten hints --type hyperlink, kitten hints --type linenum, kitten hints --type hash --program -, kitten hints --type word --program -, kitten hints --type line --program -, kitten hints --type path --program -
Colors:
	active_border_color     #cb4b16   
	active_tab_background   #fdf6e3   
	active_tab_foreground   #657b83   
	background              #fdf6e3   
	color0                  #073642   
	color1                  #dc322f   
	color10                 #586e75   
	color11                 #657b83   
	color12                 #839496   
	color13                 #6c71c4   
	color14                 #93a1a1   
	color15                 #fdf6e3   
	color2                  #859900   
	color3                  #b58900   
	color4                  #268bd2   
	color5                  #d33682   
	color6                  #2aa198   
	color7                  #eee8d5   
	color8                  #93a1a1   
	color9                  #cb4b16   
	cursor                  #657b83   
	cursor_text_color       #fdf6e3   
	foreground              #657b83   
	inactive_border_color   #93a1a1   
	inactive_tab_background #93a1a1   
	inactive_tab_foreground #fdf6e3   
	selection_background    #eee8d5   
	selection_foreground    #586e75   

Important environment variables seen by the kitty process:
	PATH                                /home/joel/bin:/usr/local/bin:/home/joel/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/default/bin:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl:/home/joel/.local/share/gem/ruby/3.0.0/bin
	LANG                                en_US.UTF-8
	EDITOR                              nvim
	SHELL                               /bin/zsh
	DISPLAY                             :0
	USER                                joel
	XDG_CONFIG_HOME                     /home/joel/.config
	XDG_SEAT                            seat0
	XDG_SESSION_TYPE                    tty
	XDG_SESSION_CLASS                   user
	XDG_VTNR                            1
	XDG_SESSION_ID                      1
	XDG_RUNTIME_DIR                     /run/user/1000

Additional context
Cannot be reproduced with a blank config, because a light theme must be selected

[kovidgoyal]

This is a bug in the theme you are using. The highlight kitten does not
use any actual colors, instead it makes use of only the first 16 indexed
colors whose actual values are set by the theme. The theme is violating
contrast requirements between those colors.

Use for instance Gruvbox Light or Kaolin Breeze and you will be fine.

[kovidgoyal]

Oh and in case you dont want to change the theme you can also use --hints-text-color when invoking the kitten to override the color.

[dderjoel]

Yes thanks for coming back this quick. I thought it could be a themes bug, but I tried a couple themes and all of them showed the same issue. Thanks! I'll use the two that work then :)

Should I open another issue for the fact that it parses the paths wrong when a file has spaces (V46 - Repaired - Repaired)?

[kovidgoyal]

Spaces are not considered part of file paths, if they were it would
become impossible to, for instance, get filenames from the output of ls.
You can ofc ourse customize this however you like, see the docs of the
kitten.

[dderjoel]

yeah I know I could use regex, but ls already prints the filename in 's, so I assumed that --type=path recognises that.

[kovidgoyal]

No, there are many tools apart from ls that prints paths separated from normal text by spaces. Path detection has to be more general. If you are particularly using it with ls use hyperlink mode, that is fully robust.

[dderjoel]

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing.
I am using ls --hyperlink=auto --color=auto and then ls will list the files. If a filename has spaces in it, it surrounds the name with quotation marks '. I can now use my mouse to click it and icat-open it, but I fail do see how I could select it with my keyboard only.

[kovidgoyal]

Press ctrl+shift+p>y

[dderjoel]

yes, that lets me select correctly, but I want to insert the item on the cmd line.
When I use kitten hints --type hyperlink --program - I end up with the link (e.g. file://arch4/home/joel/Videos/V45%20-%20Repaired.mp4) on my cmd line. I couldn't find a way to select the hyperlink but then only print the name in the documentation of the hints kitten?

[kovidgoyal]

The actions and selection of the hints kitten are completely
customizable you can even write your own code to do whatever you want
with them, see the kitten docs.

[karlb]

I still think bright-gray is a difficult choice as a default. I understand why this should be considered the theme's fault, but unfortunately there is no standard of which color combinations should provide reasonable contrast and it is impossible to design a theme where all color combinations work well. So fixing this in the theme often breaks other terminal applications. I like the explanation in https://blog.ce9e.org/posts/2019-06-24-terminal-colors/ and the conclusion it came to:

For application authors:

• Avoid black and white, as they are used inconsistently.
• Never combine two colors or a bright color with foreground. Only combine regular/bright colors with background and maybe regular colors with foreground.

So to make the hints work reliably out of the box for users of light themes, I would prefer one of the following approaches:

• Set the default to one of the six (non-white/black) colors
• Allow themes to supply a default color for --hints-text-color

Apart from this, I really like how the hints feature works!

[kovidgoyal]

The hint text needs to stand out, from normal text. normal text is the default foreground. Therefore it needs to be the bright version of the default foreground. Themes can set the hints text color, it is the bright foreground. They need to make it actually more eye catching than the foreground.

That said this is fairly trivial to workaround buggy themes in the kitten. Have kitty add the 16 basic colors to an env var when running the kitten. And in the kitten pick the hint text color based on that. Change the default value of --hints-text-color to auto, so that by default the text color is chosen based on the env-var. PR welcome or I will get to it when I have a moment.