Default emacs theme question

[gguimaraesbr]

What if I want to use the default emacs theme? Is it possible? I tried setting dotspacemacs-themes to nil but it doesn't work.

Thanks!

[izahn]

You can get part of the way there with

  (while custom-enabled-themes
    (disable-theme (car custom-enabled-themes)))

[cpaulik]

I think this is a bug. In SPC T h the default theme is an option. But putting default in dotspacemacs-themes gives an error because spacemacs looks for a melpa package default-theme

[izahn]

I don't think this counts as a bug, though possibly a missing feature. The thing is, there is no "default" theme. The "default" theme is just what you get when you disable all custom themes. If you look at helm-themes [1] you'll see that it first disables any custom themes with (mapc 'disable-theme custom-enabled-themes) (this being a smarter version of my while loop in the earlier comment), and then it does nothing if the selected them is "default".

All that said, it probably is a good idea to have a way of running spacemacs without a custom them. I've submitted a PR (#4757) that allows setting default in dotspacemacs-themes, in which case no theme will be enabled.

[1] https://github.com/syohex/emacs-helm-themes/blob/7d0d457f1f14492805b2766937a2df55fe665375/helm-themes.el#L34

[syl20bnr]

Built-in themes are supported. I don't recall the name of the default theme but I'm pretty sure it has another name than default.

Can you try with another built-in theme name ?

[izahn]

I think what we're after here is the "theme" you get if you start emacs with emacs -Q. There is no theme for that; it is the absense of a custom theme. The problem is not that built-in themes don't work, but rather that we want to be able to starr emacs without enableing any theme.

[madand]

The fix is also in master for a while. The code

dotspacemacs-themes '(default)

works as expected. So the issue may be closed.

[shankmittal]

dotspacemacs-themes '(default) doesn't work anymore on new spacemacs

[dangom]

Any updates on this?

[TheBB]

I pushed a fix, check now.

[duianto]

It seems to be working:

This is probably a separate issue, but I switched to an older branch while I was testing, and the message:

error: (error Unable to find theme file for ‘default’)

appears twice in the *Messages* buffer, 3rd from the top

Loading c:/Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/core/core-load-paths.el (source)...done
Loading c:/Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/.spacemacs...done
error: (error Unable to find theme file for ‘default’)
Setting the font...
PNG warning: Interlace handling should be turned on when using png_read_image
Open the quickhelp.

and line 60-70 something (the Spacemacs home buffer was open before restarting, therefore it opened on startup):

Loading c:/Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/layers/+source-control/version-control/keybindings.el (source)...done
Loading c:/Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/.cache/spacemacs-buffer.el (source)...done
Spacemacs is ready.
error: (error Unable to find theme file for ‘default’)
Loading c:/Users/Username/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/.cache/recentf...done
Open the quickhelp.
Skipping check for new version (reason: dotfile)
[yas] Prepared just-in-time loading of snippets successfully.

is the theme loading twice?

The message

Open the quickhelp

also appears twice.

System Info 💻

• OS: windows-nt
• Emacs: 25.2.2
• Spacemacs: 0.200.9
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 9424430)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(helm auto-completion emacs-lisp git markdown
      (org :variables org-agenda-files
           '("c:/Users/Username/Documents/"))
      version-control)

• System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS MODULES

[TheBB]

error: (error Unable to find theme file for ‘default’)

That's exactly what I fixed. Not surprising that you see it on a different branch that doesn't have the fix.

[duianto]

The question was, since it's reported twice in the messages buffer, is the theme loaded twice? Or since the "Open the quickhelp" message also appears twice, is there something else going on?

[dangom]

It works now, but my modeline is still messed up, i.e., black fonts on a black background.

[TheBB]

@duianto If the theme fails to load early in the boot process, it will load the fallback theme (spacemacs-dark) and attempt to load it again after packages have been fully initialized. So yeah, if there's an error, it will try to do it twice.

[TheBB]

@dangom Those are the default colours for the powerline faces, I believe.

[ghost]

I also have issues with choosing the default theme as default :D A workaround for me is to just put the default theme on the 2nd to last position in dotspacemacs-themes and switch to it once emacs starts with SPC T n.

[AlexDaniel]

Yeah, and it seems like it needs something like this also:

   dotspacemacs-mode-line-theme '(spacemacs)

Otherwise the modeline is sorta broken.

[gnumonk]

This is still not working with the latest
Warnings:

• An error occurred while applying the theme "default", fallback on theme
  "spacemacs-dark". Error was: (error Unable to find theme file for ‘default’)
• Please check the value of "dotspacemacs-themes" in your dotfile or open an issue
  so we can add support for the theme "default".

Spacemacs v.0.200.13

Below variable set in .spacemacs

dotspacemacs-themes '(default)

[Compro-Prasad]

@gnumonk I don't think master has the same changes as in develop. For me, it works on the develop branch.

[equwal]

This works (putting the theme as "default") on the current spacemacs.