bug#21898: scss-mode font-lock face for variables

[Simen Heggestøyl]

Hello, Jackson!

Thanks for the report. I never noticed this issue myself, since the

theme I'm using (Leuven) styles the css-property face. We should

definitely fix it.

Like you say, two possible solutions are:

1. Highlight variables with font-lock-constant-face instead of

   font-lock-variable-name-face. A downside is that this is backwards

   wrt. the intended meaning of the faces, so users will see variables

   highlighted in a face that's usually used for constants. An upside is

   that it will probably look nice with existing themes, since they are

   likely to already style font-lock-variable-name-face.

2. Change the css-property face. It doesn't mean it has to inherit from

   another one of the standard Font Lock faces, we could also just

   change the default foreground color, for instance. A downside of this

   approach is that users may be startled that the face that they were

   used to changed, but for themes that already style the css-property,

   everything will be like before. The upside is that

   font-lock-variable-name-face remains used for variables, like it's

   intended to.

I'm not sure which solution is best.

Either way, we should also add a defface for variables and use it for

Sass variables (and also CSS variables later on).

-- Simen

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:37 AM, Jackson Hamilton <jackson@jacksonrayhamilton.com> wrote:

I'd like to propose the following change to the scss-mode on master: Use font-lock-constant-face for SCSS variables.

This may not seem intuitive from a naming perspective, but font-lock-variable-name-face is already used for CSS properties. That makes it harder to distinguish between properties and variables.

AFAIK, Sass doesn't even have constants, so I don't see much harm in using this face. It'd be a less dramatic change for those who have grown used to variable coloring for CSS properties.

I guess the alternative would be to inherit the property face from something else, to free up the face for real variables. But then what do we use for properties? (Inheriting from nothing doesn't look good IMO.)

Attached is the proposed patch.