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: 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, which is highlighted in the monochrome 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 highlighting 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 anti-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 are also provided under assets/ in the GitHub repository. On UNIX systems, you may clone this repository, install Cursor, and run make install to install 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 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"
}

You may also run make dev for file watcher & incremental compilation

Contributing

Before contributing, it's 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.

Converters (Beta)

Preliminary support for autogenerating themes from VSCode implementation(s)

Note, these are provided as-is under nightly releases

Zed

Uses the Zed Team's theme_importer crate

Depends on gpui for the time being, so ensure dependencies

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

# install theme + dotfiles
make install-zed

# run zed
zed

Textmate

Uses in-house json2tm crate, works with Textmate-compatible editors

# translate themes
make textmate

# (optional) install to Sublime user folder (macOS only)
make install-sublime

# (optional) install to Textmate (macOS only)
make install-textmate

Tested with; including but not limited to

• Textmate
• Sublime Text
• Atom (deprecated)
• RStudio

As the Textmate themes only affect the code window, compatibility variants are not generated

Sublime Text

Generates complementary themes for Sublime Text UI. Uses in-house json2st crate

# translate themes
make sublime-ui

# (optional) install to Sublime user folder (macOS only)
make install-sublime-ui

Intellij

(not recommended)

Uses Jetbrain's colorSchemeTool

# translate themes
make intellij

# settings -> color theme -> cog -> manual import

Visual Studio

Use Microsoft's Theme Converter for Visual Studio, requires .NET Desktop & the Visual Studio extension development enviornment. JSON files are in themes

Utilities

Convert any VSCode theme

./scripts/vsc.sh <input.json>

# e.g. convert material theme
./scripts/vsc.sh ./assets/Community-Material-Theme-Darker-High-Contrast.json

Patch Cursor to use VSCode's Proprietary Marketplace instead of OpenVSX

./scripts/patch-cursor-marketplace.sh

Benchmark the Neon implementation

./scripts/benchneon.py --iterations 2 --warmups 0 --tokens 1000 --color-keys 200