Customizing IDE colors

Chay_Wesley · February 17, 2016, 5:22pm

I’m customizing the IDE colors for a darker that I find more comfortable, but can’t find a setting to control the background color of selected text, like attached image shows in a light-blue color. Anyone know if I’m just overlooking the setting, or is the highlighted text color not directly configurable?

Norman_P · February 17, 2016, 6:22pm

that highlight color is system controlled

Joe_Ranieri · February 17, 2016, 7:12pm

There’s an undocumented user default that OS X checks when determining what the highlight color is. You can change it for just Xojo by doing:

defaults write com.xojo.xojo AppleHighlightColor "0.968627 0.831373 1.000000"

Note that this affects all selection highlights in the app, not just the code editor.

Tim_Parnell · February 17, 2016, 7:17pm

There has to be a way for text selection, as some code editors that let you change colors let you change selection color.

Or is that a power user feature, up there with line numbers next to the actual line, and controllable indent size?

Joe_Ranieri · February 17, 2016, 7:33pm

I don’t see a feature request for this anywhere in Feedback and it’s not something I’ve heard asked for before (or at least, often).

Anthony_Dellos · February 17, 2016, 8:10pm

FWIW - I use a dark scheme (similar to screenshot from Chay) and Ive found that a darker light-gray works pretty well for both Xojo and other apps. (still looks OK over standard text).

Great tip about Xojo specific setting, thanks @Joe Ranieri !

One other tip - Ive never been able to find where Xojo stores the custom IDE color values so on OS X, I put all of my custom IDE colors in a custom palette named something like IDE Colors. Those pallets are not too hard to transfer from machine-to-machine. Also, it makes it easy to use the same colors in other apps/editors. I like consistency, so keeping an IDE palette has been a real help!

Tim_Parnell · February 17, 2016, 8:14pm

@Gavin Smith made a cool tool called XojoThemes, but it seems to be unreachable with his website being down. I’ve reached out to him on Twitter. The Xojo color scheme is stored in the Xojo preferences file.

Gavin_Smith · February 17, 2016, 8:18pm

Chay, if you (or anyone else) wants to beta test the new-and-hopefully-improved XojoThemes, send me a PM and I’ll hook you up.

Chay_Wesley · February 18, 2016, 4:31pm

Thanks for the information.

@Gavin Smith - I’ll be in touch.

Gavin_Smith · March 4, 2016, 7:21pm

XojoThemes 1.0 beta is with a couple of testers now - it should be fine but before I put it out into the wild, does anyone else want to test it?

Tim_Parnell · March 4, 2016, 7:28pm

Sure send it my way

Gavin_Smith · March 4, 2016, 7:43pm

Thanks guys, PMs on the way.