Re: Stealing a default face from a non-ELPA package

[João Távora]

Hello Tim,

The goal here, I think, was not to decide if the change had merit or not. As far as I understand there are demonstrable functional problems with the faces default settings as chosen by Brian himself.

I presume Brian is just trying to fix those problems, a legitimate goal that cannot be left to "theme authors". There is such a thing as the "default theme" and we are all its authors.

Brian is just asking if it is "legal" to take inspiration for decorative face settings from a different project outside GNU ELPA. I believe it is quite legal, but I'm not a specialist so suggested he ask here.

João 

On Sat, Mar 5, 2022, 08:14 Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> wrote:

Brian Leung <leungbk@posteo.net> writes:

> I sent this question to the mailing list this morning but I can't see it on the
> list archives, so I'm trying to send it again:
>
> In
> https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot/discussions/858#discussioncomment-2288255,
> a user noticed that lsp-mode used as a face default a much nicer setting
> than what currently exists in eglot. Given that lsp-mode is not part of
> ELPA, can we steal its setting and use it in eglot?

"much nicer" is a very subjective metric. What you think is much nicer I
might think is much uglier. Tweaking face properties is really best left
to either individuals or theme authors.

>From what I can tell in that thread, all that is being proposed is to
change the foreground colour of an eglot face to use the same value as a
lsp-mode face. If that is the case, I don't see any copyright violation
here. All that is being done is changing the value of a face. As the
code used to define faces is part of core Emacs, your not talking about
code change, only default value change.

I do think it is a pointless change. While the proposed new foreground
colour might look better to one individual using specific hardware on a
specific platform with a specific theme, it could look much worse to
another user on a different platform, with different hardware and a
different theme who will then log an issue requesting that the face be
changed to something they think is a better default setting.

Purpose of default face settings should be to set a face which is usable
for the widest selection of users, regardless of hardware, platform or
type of environment (GUI/Terminal/Console). Fiddling with face
aesthetics is best left to theme authors.