Hi,

Before going any further, I'd just like to say a big thank you for updating what was already a pretty awesome program !

I see this has been brought up before, but with the nice new shiny v17 thought I would ask again in case I missed anything.
I'm one of these people that likes a dark theme for coding, so I find the default quite bright and my eyes rebel after 20 or so minutes looking at the screen !

I know the settings can be changed by going to Tools > Preferences > Customization.
It's just the highlighting (color) parameters that I would like to change.
As a start I would like to change the background color, this then pretty much impacts on all the other elements and you have to go and alter them all. Is there a way to have any predefined customization ?
A couple of link to images of what I'm aiming at
http://pda.myzen.co.uk/genpic/dark1.png
http://pda.myzen.co.uk/genpic/dark2.png

Also when you have it set how you like it, is there a way to save the changes and at a later stage revert to the default values in case you get "all messed up" ?

Thanks a lot for your time and help.

Hi, there is no such feature right now. You can customize nearly everything - except the background of the work space. I'll forward your question to the right people.

It seems to me that, if in customizing highlighting one sets the background colour for the Default Text item at the top of the list, it sets that as the colour of the whole workspace background. If one sets non-default backgrounds for other items, their custom background colour affects only those parts of the code that are those other items.

Frank

Yes, Frank, you're right! I didn't think as far as that. Must have been a senior moment...

Hi Inger, Frank,

That's exactly correct.
The default is
http://pda.myzen.co.uk/genpic/lite1.png
Change the background to dark-blue and we get
http://pda.myzen.co.uk/genpic/lite1-d1.png
So change the text to white, so that is now the exact opposite of the default and we get
http://pda.myzen.co.uk/genpic/lite1-d1-d2.png
So you end up having to go through each element to try and figure out what works and what doesn't.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. I end up getting lost in what I've changed and what I haven't. Re-installing doesn't fix the issue as the installer is clever enough to see there is a version already installed and appears to leave the user settings as they are. The only way to get back to the default is to uninstall the application and then install again.

It's not a big deal, I can always put my sunglasses on when I code for long periods

It is also easy to get misled regarding 'defaults'.

It is natural, as in the above posts, to regard the defaults as the colours used by the program before one has done any customising. In Tools > Preferences > Customization > Modify Highlighting ('Use defaults for') the word seems to mean 'whatever was set in the Default Text setting'.

One can right click on the program in the Windows Start Menu and choose Uninstall. One is given the choice of Automatic, Custom, or Repair. Choosing Repair, I clicked through everything until a 'Repair Newer File' message came up referring to a file ...\html.tsm, which it said had been modified 13 Sept. 2020 (the date on which I messed with the highlighting options). I therefore chose Yes to repair it, and the highlighting colours were restored to those originally used by the program.

There may be an even quicker or better way of doing it, but the above does at least dispense with reinstalling.

Frank

Hi Frank,

That's a great way of getting the settings back. I always thought I was Windows savvy, you live and learn.
Thanks a lot

Bob

I'm not a fan of bIack backgrounds. I prefer to be able to choose mostly all the the colors in a program.

Ideally we are really asking for a color theme for the program that can be saved as a unique name. On start-up, Your color style last used should be persistent.

That would be my hope and my two cents.

Two or three named highlighting and background colour-settings files would indeed be useful. One of them could be called Default or Original, being the one with the settings as they are when the program is first installed. The others would be for one's own settings. I certainly have used one or two changes to make things clearer for me as I'm seriously colour defective.

The HTML Editor's system of being able to change a few individual types, both foreground and background, is good in my view, and superior to choosing from a large number of presets.

Frank