| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| guest |
Posted - Aug 05 2010 : 10:45:21 AM
Enhanced syntax coloring can be unusable if Visual Studio's color scheme is different from the default. It seems like this problem is caused by colors being taken from environment settings rather than user configurable options. I would suggest adding more syntax color options, since it would not be correct to assume that every window in the IDE has a uniform color scheme.
Options:
Actual result (unreadable):
 |
| 13 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 22 2011 : 4:21:58 PM
This makes sense, I have put in a feature request to see what our developers make of this:
case=55439 |
| guest |
Posted - Feb 22 2011 : 3:35:32 PM
At the moment, it's not a problem to not have it in the text editor. It's more useful to have things highlighted in tool tips and other windows that normally don't have any type of highlighting to begin with. |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 22 2011 : 2:39:26 PM
I understand what you are talking about now. This is an interesting approach, which has turned VA's approach to dark backgrounds upside down. Don't you find this rather limiting though? You are not getting any help from VA's enhanced syntax highlighting in the main editor window. |
| guest |
Posted - Feb 22 2011 : 10:21:14 AM
The colors that do not have an options are the colors that do not appear in VA's "Fonts and Colors" dialog, and are taken from Visual Studio's color preferences. Here are some images that show what I'm talking about:
Now, if there was a "use this color instead of Visual Studio's colors" option for the non-configurable colors (as seen in the second image), the syntax highlighting would be much more useful for people using custom color schemes for the text editor, since they could select a color that makes the text more readable. (In my case, I would probably just choose black.) |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 18 2011 : 12:13:51 PM
I don't understand. What colours don't have a configured option? If you look in the IDE options dialog at the fonts and colors settings then there are a LOT of different items, and they all have a specified colour. Often it is the default colour, but it is still a colour.
Also the default colours are often different. The default comment colour is different to the default identifier colour. |
| guest |
Posted - Feb 17 2011 : 6:15:37 PM
I am aware that the changing the window colors might be more challenging, but what about the second suggestion: Adding an additional configurable color that, when enabled, forces the syntax coloring to use it in place of the colors that don't already have a configuration option. It would act like a default value, taking the user's color preference instead of using the environment's settings. |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 17 2011 : 2:14:03 PM
The problem for us is that this is not a simple suggestion. Changing the background colour of the IDE windows, or tooltips, is very hard. The IDE does not know we are here, so we have to constantly sneak around behind it trying to get the correct colour in the correct place.
VA is designed to work well with a dark background in the main editor window, since this is a fairly common situation, but the IDE does not help us change any other background colours. |
| guest |
Posted - Feb 16 2011 : 2:49:57 PM
VS2010 might solve the problem, but unfortunately I do not make the purchasing decisions, so we're stuck with VS2008 for now. Is it not possible to add some of the simple suggested features?
Changing the global window color scheme to address this issue is not something I would like to do, because I like the way it looks by default. I only changed the text editor's colors because it's the one large area that I stare at for most of the day. |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 15 2011 : 2:08:49 PM
If you are using VS2010 you might find the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension helpful:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/20cd93a2-c435-4d00-a797-499f16402378/
Earlier versions of the IDE pick up and use the global windows background colours, so you can edit these, but they do effect all programs. |
| guest |
Posted - Feb 11 2011 : 2:26:01 PM
I'm going to have to ask for this again. I don't see why more options can't be added to the currently limited set. VA is already getting color information from the environment, it would be good if this could be controlled.
Suggestions that would also be useful:
- An option to have all colors that would otherwise be taken from the environment to default to a single user defined color
- An option to change the background color of the tool tip window
The syntax coloring feature is entirely unusable for me because of the text editor's color scheme. |
| feline |
Posted - Aug 06 2010 : 11:04:26 AM
We don't have any current plans to try and do this, partly because of the number of colour options it would require. Not only would we need to duplicate some of the VA colour's we would also need to duplicate some of the IDE colours as well. Comment colour is an obvious example, if you have comments showing in VA Outline. |
| guest |
Posted - Aug 06 2010 : 10:25:02 AM
Yes, I suppose that is a reasonable workaround, but is it not possible to fix the underlying issue (too few coloring options)?
I would like to keep the custom color scheme for the text editor and it would be nice to have the syntax coloring working on other windows that have bright backgrounds. |
| feline |
Posted - Aug 05 2010 : 12:58:00 PM
If you are using a different background colour scheme for the editor window then you are going to have this problem. We normally recommend that you only apply VA Enhanced Syntax Coloring to Text Editors, and not all windows.
Alternatively you can change / darken the background colour of all windows and dropdowns using Windows' Display Properties|Appearance|Color Scheme, so you can apply enhanced syntax colors to all objects without any problems. |
