ForestRest

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ForestRest

Dwelling in the woods —— an Obsidian theme built around the imagery of "ink on rice paper", ported from the Typora theme lightmind.

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Table of Contents

• Design Philosophy
• Features
• Palette
• Screenshots
• Installation
• Customization
• Compatibility
• Project Structure
• Publishing
• Acknowledgments
• License

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Design Philosophy

ForestRest takes its name from the ideal of retreating into the woods to rest the mind — the classical pursuit of scholars who withdrew to the mountains to read and think. The theme brings that experience of "settling the mind among the hills and forests" into your notes and code. Its deeper intent: knowledge work can be a form of rest, not a relentless striving — when thought lands on warm paper and is gently surrounded by the green of the forest, the mind naturally grows calm.

The whole design language revolves around three elements — paper · forest · ink:

Light is the primary mode (the paper metaphor); dark is derived as a "night forest" — a deep forest green-black (#161b18) that keeps the forest identity even after dark.

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Features

• Warm beige rice-paper surface for low-fatigue long reading.
• Forest-green accents, restrained and natural, never overwhelming.
• Ink code blocks — the core visual tension of "ink on rice paper" (宣纸上的墨块). In dark mode the block is ink-black (#232220); in light mode the same block uses a soft forest-green ground (#d6e7d6) so code stays gentle on the pale page.
• Body in LXGW WenKai (霞鹜文楷), code in JetBrains Mono — warmth versus precision.
• Forest-spectrum syntax highlighting: moss purple, autumn gold, new moss, ochre, stream cyan, warm clay.
• Light-primary with a derived "night forest" dark mode, both from one palette.
• Full theming: Callouts, tables, blockquotes, tags, math, and footnotes.
• Pure local font fallback chain — no external network dependencies.

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Palette

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Screenshots

The image above is a concept preview of ForestRest: warm beige paper, ink-black code blocks (ink on rice paper), forest-green foliage, and warm-gold autumn leaves — together expressing the "paper · forest · ink" motif.

Actual interface

• Light (paper): warm beige surface + forest-green headings + ink code blocks.
• Dark (night forest): deep forest green-black ground + brightened forest-green accents.

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Installation

Method 1: Community theme browser (pending submission)

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage.
2. Search for ForestRest and enable it.

Method 2: Manual install

1. Download manifest.json and theme.css from this repository.
2. Place them in <your vault>/.obsidian/themes/ForestRest/.
3. Enable ForestRest under Settings → Appearance.

Method 3: Via BRAT (development builds)

1. Install the BRAT plugin.
2. Add a beta theme → enter this repository URL.
3. Enable ForestRest under Appearance.

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Customization

The theme is driven by CSS variables. Override variables in :root or .theme-light / .theme-dark to fine-tune. For example, to shift the accent toward a deeper pine green:

/* Append to your snippet or theme.css */
.theme-light {
  --accent: #2f6b43;
  --accent-deep: #173d24;
}

Commonly adjusted variables:

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Compatibility

• Minimum Obsidian version: 1.1.9 (see minAppVersion in manifest.json).
• Version mapping: versions.json maps Obsidian app versions to theme versions for backward-compatible updates.
• Modes: both light and dark are supported.

{
  "1.0.0": "1.1.9"
}

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Project Structure

ForestRest/
├── manifest.json      # Theme metadata (name / version / author / minAppVersion)
├── theme.css          # Theme styles (design tokens + light/dark mappings)
├── versions.json      # Obsidian version → theme version mapping
├── CHANGELOG.md       # Version history
├── LICENSE            # MIT License
├── README.md          # English documentation (GitHub default)
├── README.zh.md       # Chinese documentation
└── images/            # Store screenshot (preview-light-16x9.png)

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Publishing

• Current version v1.0.0, tagged v1.0.0, minimum Obsidian 1.1.9.
• To submit to the Obsidian community themes:
  1. Create a GitHub Release (recommended tag: v1.0.0).
  2. Open a PR against the obsidian-releases repository pointing to this repo.
  3. The repository root must contain manifest.json and theme.css (this repo already satisfies that).

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Acknowledgments

• Ported from the design philosophy of the Typora theme lightmind (clear / light mind → dwelling in the woods).
• Body font LXGW WenKai (霞鹜文楷) —— an open-source humanist CJK typeface.
• Code font JetBrains Mono —— JetBrains' open-source monospace typeface.
• Engineering, documentation, and preview images assisted by WorkBuddy.

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. © 2026 fengmz.