Is this the preferred way to merge TextStyles (in this case picking a standard style and then bumping down the opacity)?

Text(
    text = "9:49 AM",
    modifier = LayoutPadding(left = 8.dp),
    style = MaterialTheme.typography().caption.merge(
        TextStyle(
            color = palette.onSecondary.copy(
                alpha = 0.2f
            )
        )
    )
)

If so, what about letting TextStyles have an + operator to make their usage more similar to Modifiers?

In this example, you can just use

.copy(color =...

instead of needing to fully merge. Although instead of copying text styles and changing opacity, you should take a look at

ProvideEmphasis

- it's intended for the use case of modifying opacity of some content

ooh thanks a lot I'll take a look at ProvideEmphasis!

https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/androidx/ui/material/package-summary.html#ProvideEmphasis(androidx.ui.material.Emphasis,%20kotlin.Function0) Here's docs / samples

thanks! worked great.

ProvideEmphasis(emphasis = MaterialTheme.emphasisLevels().disabled) {
    Text(
        text = dateFormat.format(msg.date),
        modifier = LayoutPadding(left = 8.dp),
        style = MaterialTheme.typography().caption
    )
}

Cool, happy to hear 🙂 Semantically it means a lot more than just copying an alpha value too, so I think it's a nice way of expressing alpha

yep - though I'd say in this case I'm not really trying to convey "disabled" as much as I'm trying to convey "minor"

Yeah, disabled is wrong here for sure. If this doesn't map cleanly to something from the Material spec, I think it would make sense to just create your own emphasis for this component.

val TimestampEmphasis = object: Emphasis {
    override fun emphasize(color: Color) = color.copy(alpha = 0.12f)
}
    
ProvideEmphasis(TimestampEmphasis) { ... }

ooh! that is nice. thanks again. (I'm a 99% embedded device sw or backend geek ;-))