Inlay hints may not want to be the same color as comments

[Cldfire]

Hi! First of all, thanks for keeping this theme supported and up-to-date. It's my daily driver and I really appreciate it :).

I just started using inlay hints for the first time now that vscode lets you quickly toggle them on and off. In pale-fire, these show up with the same color as comments. Here's an example slice of code with inlay hints off:

and with inlay hints on:

It's difficult to put into words but the inlay hints just don't stand out enough for me to want to read them and utilize their information. I have a different voice in my head for "human things" (comments written in human language) vs. "machine things" (code written in programming language), and inlay hints being colored as comments makes me read them subconsciously in my "human things" voice which makes my brain sort of glaze over them (comments lie sometimes okay :stuck_out_tongue:).

For contrast, here's how the default dark theme in vscode colors inlay hints:

I like this a lot:

• It's high-contrast with the translucent backing, making it easy to pick out from the rest of the text
• It's colored in a way that makes me read it in my "machine things" voice, making it more important to my brain and preventing me from glazing over them when I turn them on

Do you have any thoughts / feels on inlay hints? Should we consider changing their style in pale-fire?

[lunacookies]

I think, since the default is for inlay hints to be enabled, we should by default use an unobtrusive style. Here’s a grey colour instead of the green we’re currently using:

If you’d like higher contrast inlay hints, we could either make alternate versions of Pale Fire with the high contrast inlay hints baked in, or you could add the following to your settings.json:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "editorInlayHint.background": "#505050",
  "editorInlayHint.foreground": "#E0E0C9"
}

which gives this:

[Cldfire]

Ooo, the gray inlay hints look really nice. I'll give those a try locally :).

If you’d like higher contrast inlay hints, we could either make alternate versions of Pale Fire with the high contrast inlay hints baked in, or you could add the following to your settings.json:

I definitely don't think it's worth the trouble to make alternate versions with adjusted inlay hint colors. Thanks for the tip on local overrides 🙏

[lunacookies]

I’d be happy to merge the grey inlay hints into master, if you find you like them.

[Cldfire]

I've been using the gray color you suggested for a couple of weeks now and I've been quite enjoying it. If others don't have anything against it my vote would be to merge the gray color into master 😄.

[lunacookies]

This should be published in 0.4.25.