TextMate Theme For Visual Studio, Take 2
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 -
Previously I posted my modified version of Jon Lam's Vibrant Ink theme (which is a copy of the TextMate/Rails theme), and I've received a lot of queries about it, including some tips and changes.
I've updated this theme, and you can download it here.
Last night I geeked out completely and sat down with my Mac and a color selector, and wrote down all the colors and so forth that make up the really really nice Vibrant Ink theme for TextMate (this is TextMate on a Mac):
A few things stood out as I was looking over this theme:
- Mac's font rendering, while questionable, is really, really nice on the eyes. I really like how it renders Monaco, versus the way Vista seems to render it. Monaco, on Vista, is supposed to be fixed-width, which makes it a good choice for a code editor.
- I've changed my mind about using it as I agree with Atwood - Consolas butter's my bread, it's so nice to read.
- The current Vibrant Ink theme has too much contrast (for my eyes). I really like the colorfulness of the original, and I like how it's toned down a bit.
- Bolding Consolas makes it far better to read on a black background - it also makes it appear smoother.
I adhered as closely as I could (minus Monaco) to the way TextMate does it, and without further ado, here is my updated Vibrant Ink theme:
A Code file. I'm playing with some mocked MVC bits to get SubSonic ready!
ASPX page with inline scripting and server control. Takes some getting used to but hopefully not that long. I tried to set the background to white but they both use "Text Editor" settings so ... no joy there.
The output window. Ahh the good old CRT days. This is untouched from Atwood's settings.
You can download the tweaked theme here.
That's great, I love that theme. Just one thing. The file is for VS 2008, and VS 2005 won't let you import it, but if you change to and it works fine.
Cheers
Kev
Somehow the editor even seems more responsive but I guess that's just my imagination.
One little note..
The brace matching doesn't highlight the matched braces.
I changed the backgroundcolor and that fixed it.
The problem i have is that in the HTML editor i lose the cursor, it stays the same colour as the black background. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
The theme is super cool ^_^
The only problem is cursor is black too. So it can't be distinguished between backgroud? Do you know how to set cursor color to white?
My customizations (mostly for better contrast):
Selected Text: Item background = Gray
Brace Matching (Rectangle): Item background = rgb(96,96,96)
Collapsible Text: Item foreground = Gray
String (C# @ Verbatim): Item foreground = rgb(232,74,74)
Warning: Item foreground = Lime
Visual Basic Read Only Marker: Item foreground = Gray
XAML Attribute Quotes: Item foreground = White
XAML Text: Item foreground = rgb(165,194,92)
XML Attribute Quotes: Item foreground = White
XML Doc Comment: Item foreground = rgb(124,226,124)
XML Text: Item foreground = rgb(165,194,92)
...And Happy New Year! :-)