Previous: Applying Customizations, Up: Customization
Custom themes are collections of settings that can be enabled or disabled as a unit. See Custom Themes. Each Custom theme is defined by an Emacs Lisp source file, which should follow the conventions described in this section. (Instead of writing a Custom theme by hand, you can also create one using a Customize-like interface; see Creating Custom Themes.)
A Custom theme file should be named foo-theme.el, where
foo is the theme name. The first Lisp form in the file should
be a call to deftheme, and the last form should be a call to
provide-theme.
This macro declares theme (a symbol) as the name of a Custom theme. The optional argument doc should be a string describing the theme; this is the description shown when the user invokes the
describe-themecommand or types ? in the ‘*Custom Themes*’ buffer.Two special theme names are disallowed (using them causes an error):
useris a “dummy” theme that stores the user's direct customization settings, andchangedis a “dummy” theme that stores changes made outside of the Customize system.
This macro declares that the theme named theme has been fully specified.
In between deftheme and provide-theme are Lisp forms
specifying the theme settings: usually a call to
custom-theme-set-variables and/or a call to
custom-theme-set-faces.
This function specifies the Custom theme theme's variable settings. theme should be a symbol. Each argument in args should be a list of the form
(var expression [now [request [comment]]])where the list entries have the same meanings as in
custom-set-variables. See Applying Customizations.
This function specifies the Custom theme theme's face settings. theme should be a symbol. Each argument in args should be a list of the form
(face spec [now [comment]])where the list entries have the same meanings as in
custom-set-faces. See Applying Customizations.
In theory, a theme file can also contain other Lisp forms, which would be evaluated when loading the theme, but that is “bad form”. To protect against loading themes containing malicious code, Emacs displays the source file and asks for confirmation from the user before loading any non-built-in theme for the first time.
The following functions are useful for programmatically enabling and disabling themes:
This function return a non-
nilvalue if theme (a symbol) is the name of a Custom theme (i.e., a Custom theme which has been loaded into Emacs, whether or not the theme is enabled). Otherwise, it returnsnil.
The value of this variable is a list of themes loaded into Emacs. Each theme is represented by a Lisp symbol (the theme name). The default value of this variable is a list containing two “dummy” themes:
(user changed). Thechangedtheme stores settings made before any Custom themes are applied (e.g., variables set outside of Customize). Theusertheme stores settings the user has customized and saved. Any additional themes declared with thedefthememacro are added to the front of this list.
This function loads the Custom theme named theme from its source file, looking for the source file in the directories specified by the variable
custom-theme-load-path. See Custom Themes. It also enables the theme (unless the optional argument no-enable is non-nil), causing its variable and face settings to take effect. It prompts the user for confirmation before loading the theme, unless the optional argument no-confirm is non-nil.