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 4 variants to the theme, the standard theme, an OLED variant, and Compatibility variants for each

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

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)

Features

• Comprehensive semantic highlighting
• Carefully crafted color palette for maximum contrast and readability
• 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
  • 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
• 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