Oxocarbon is a High contrast accessible colorscheme inspired by IBM Carbon. It delivers class-leading readability without strain by adhering to WCAG 2.1 guidelines

Variants

There are 9 variants to the theme, the standard theme, an OLED variant, Compatibility variants for both, Monochrom variants for each of those, and a PRINT variant

The standard theme features a consistent dark background, modeled after a focus on the editor

The OLED theme is the same as the standard theme, but optimized for OLED and MiniLED displays with a pure black background and dimmed menus

Compatibility

The compatibility variants provide contrast for tabs and menus to enable a more consistent experience on traditional VSCode layouts

Oxocarbon Dark (Compatibility)

Oxocarbon OLED (Compatibility)

Monochrom

A hallmark of oxocarbon is the attention to font styling alongside color, this is highlighted in the monochrom variants

Oxocarbon Monochrom

Oxocarbon OLED Monochrom (Compatibility)

PRINT

The PRINT variant inverts Oxocarbon OLED Monochrom to create a paper-friendly light theme for printing and e-ink displays

Oxocarbon PRINT

Features

• Comprehensive semantic highlighting
• Carefully crafted color palette for maximum contrast and readability
• Monochrome and Compatibility variants for a more traditional feel
• Support for various editor features:
  • Semantic tokens
  • Git decorations
  • Debug & Testing
  • Terminal colors
  • Status bar indicators
  • Editor widgets and overlays
  • Bracket pair colorization
  • Remote Development
  • Inlay hints
  • Peek view
  • Printing
  • Diff editor
  • Jupyter Notebook support
  • Quick input
  • Menu styling
  • Gauge indicators
  • Minimap customization
  • Banner styling
  • Cursor Chat

Language Support

Any language with a textmate parser and/or semantic highlghting support is supported (i.e. almost all of them)

Oxocarbon also provides handrolled syntax highlighting for:

• C
• Rust
• Go
• Lisp
• Java
• Haskell
• OCaml
• Verilog
• Markdown
• TOML

Installation

Install using your package manager of choice: Oxocarbon Theme - Visual Studio Marketplace, Oxocarbon Theme - Open VSX Registry

Alternatively, a VSIX package can be found under releases

Manual

• Download repository source as ZIP
• Unpack in ~/.vscode/extensions (VSCode) or ~/.cursor/extensions (Cursor)
• Reload editor then set theme to either oxocarbon or oxocarbon OLED

Additional Configuration

It is recommended to enable Semantic Parsing by default

{
  "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true,
}

Rust semantic parsing is buggy so it is recommended to default back to TextMate Parsing. In your settings.json

{
  "[rust]": {
    "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": false,
  },
}

It is recommended to disable Bracket Pair Colorization by default and enable it on a case-by-case basis

{
  "editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": false,
  "[commonlisp]": {
    "editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
  },
}

(optional) Install the Liga SFMono Nerd Font font for the best experience

{
  "editor.fontFamily": "Liga SFMono Nerd Font, monospace",
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,
  "editor.fontSize": 14,
}

On HiDPI/Retina displays, you may find text rendering improved by adjusting font ant-aliasing

{
  "workbench.fontAliasing": "auto",
}

(optional) enable smooth scrolling and cursor effects

{
  "editor.smoothScrolling": true,
  "editor.cursorBlinking": "smooth",
  "editor.cursorSmoothCaretAnimation": "on",

  "terminal.integrated.smoothScrolling": true,
  "terminal.integrated.cursorBlinking": true,
  "terminal.integrated.enableVisualBell": true,
}

An opinionated settings.json, keybindings.json, and list of extensions is also provided under assets/ in the GitHub Repository. On UNIX systems, you may clone this repository, install Cursor, and run make install to intall the configuration.

Development

The following requires Cargo/Rust. Changes should be made in oxocarbon.toml

To generate the JSON file, run make in the root directory. To test the colorscheme, press F5

Reference the Theme Color Reference & [Semantic Highlight Guide]*https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/semantic-highlight-guide) for highlight groups

Additionally, add the following in your keybindings.json to use cmd+shift+i to inspect the highlight at cursor

{
    "key": "cmd+shift+i",
    "command": "editor.action.inspectTMScopes"
}

Contributing

Before contributing, its recommended to read through the style guide. Discussion primarily takes place on the Nyoom Engineering Discord Server

License

The project is vendored under the MIT license

Zed (beta)

You may autogenerate themes for the Zed text editor from VSCode themes

E.g. on macOS (make sure full Xcode is installed, not just command-line-tools)

# need cmake
nix shell nixpkgs#cmake nixpkgs#jq

# use app toolchain
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app 

# install metal toolchain
xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain

# build gpui, translate themes, bundle
make zed