String arguments are not colorized when using a custom ExpressionTemplate

I noticed that when using a custom ExpressionTemplate, my placeholders in log messages are no longer colorized. Is this a bug? e.g. Log.Information("foo {bar}", "bar") won’t color the "bar" anymore.

I suspect it’s only a problem with string arguments.

My template:

var template = new ExpressionTemplate(
                "[{@l:u3}] {Coalesce(Substring(SourceContext, LastIndexOf(SourceContext, '.') + 1),'Core')} " +
                "<{ThreadId}> {@m}\n{@x}", theme: TemplateTheme.Code);

Without ExpressionTemplate:

With ExpressionTemplate:

I’m not sure if this a problem in expressions, or in the console sink.

[Meligy]

Actually, removing all formatting strings seems to work. Thanks.

[rcdailey]

I added my thumbs up to this issue, although I’m not sure if votes are effective here.

I will say there are two major issues I ran into that made migration from the default template system to this one challenging:

1. It wasn’t clear to me at first that the existing template syntax wasn’t compatible with this new Serilog.Expressions system. I thought the basic elements (like message, level, etc) would work out of the box.
2. The coloring issue was weird and eventually lead me to this issue.

I think number 1 can be solved with documentation (or if it already exists, I somehow missed it). Number 2 as stated here seems to be broken by using formatters (and as part of the first point, it not being clear that some of them aren’t needed, as was the case for @m:lj).

I appreciate the workaround from @nblumhardt!