WinBar highlight is off in Neovim 0.10

[sarmong]

I have done the following steps before reporting this issue:

• [X] I have searched the existing issues
• [X] I have read the FAQ in the help doc

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Neovim 0.10 sets default highlighting for WinBar thus making active winbar black.

[antoineco]

Thanks for reporting! I'll have a look before next week.

[antoineco]

I found the culprit: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/26921

I am not yet sure what visual appearance this bar should have. In Neovim's default colorscheme, the authors decided to use a style which differs significantly from the statusline:

• The statusline is bright and becomes dimmed in non-current windows
• The winbar is dark and doesn't change color in non-current windows (but the text is bold in the active window)

I think I'm going to try something similar in gruvbox-material for a start.

[antoineco]

@sarmong would you mind adding this autocmd temporarily to your init.lua and giving me some feedback on the result?

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd('ColorScheme', {
  group = vim.api.nvim_create_augroup('custom_highlights_gruvboxmaterial', {}),
  pattern = 'gruvbox-material',
  callback = function()
    local config = vim.fn['gruvbox_material#get_configuration']()
    local palette = vim.fn['gruvbox_material#get_palette'](config.background, config.foreground, config.colors_override)
    local set_hl = vim.fn['gruvbox_material#highlight']

    set_hl('WinBar', palette.grey2, palette.bg_dim, 'bold')
    set_hl('WinBarNC', palette.grey1, palette.bg_dim)
  end
})

[sarmong]

What do you think about using lighter color? For example, the same bg color as in lualine - I think its the bg_current_word. Or maybe just anything lighter than this one.

Because right now it's the same as the color of the tabline.

[antoineco]

With so many possible bars on the screen I feel that it's going to be hard to please everyone 😅

I think I'm going to gate this behind an option like g:gruvbox_material_winbar_style and allow people to choose between 2 or 3 base styles.

One of the thing which bothered me, while trying to default to the same color as the statusline, is that the winbar of the lower window seemed to be "merging" with the statusline of the upper window.

edit: note that if I make the winbar lighter, it is likely to have the same color as your active tab.

[antoineco]

For the sake of having some (arguably) reasonable default in the colorscheme, I went ahead and linked WinBar[NC] to StatusLine[NC], like it was prior to Neovim v0.10. This change is meant to be simple and neutral, instead of overthinking the aesthetics.

In case we want to be opinionated and offer multiple default winbar styles to users, we can do that in a separate proposal. However, I would argue that statuslines and other bars (winbar, tabbar) are so often customized using plugins that we should probably stay away from trying to style them ourselves. One example is the StatusLine highlight group which, if used without plugins, looks nothing like the style applied by plugins (see example below).

StatusLine: colorscheme vs. plugin (taken from sainnhe/everforest)

_colorscheme default_  _statusline plugins_ 

[sarmong]

Actually, I found a problem with linking WinBar to StatusLine when using nvim-window-picker plugin. This plugins sets highlights for the statusline and thus winbar highlight changes as well.

I know it is impossible to fit every usecase, but maybe solution to just duplicate highlighting from StatusLine to WinBar will work better than linking it?

[antoineco]

@sarmong sure this shouldn't be a problem. Any other feedback on the previous change? Is the aesthetic aspect satisfying? (I don't have winbar set myself)

[sarmong]

Maybe another thing worth considering - is making the text bold? Before the change (in 0.9) it was bold

[antoineco]

Fully agree. It's indeed bold by default, and in https://github.com/sainnhe/gruvbox-material/issues/203#issuecomment-2118344212 I also suggested to make it bold, the attribute simply got lost while linking.

[antoineco]

@sarmong the change is now on master.

[sarmong]

Thank you