[Geany-Users] change size, color of "show spaces"

[Lex Trotman]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2018 at 13:28, <bendov at gmx.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you.
> I understood what the 3rd, 4th argument for white_space did.
> I was asking about using bold, italics - using the "key=" syntax /
> method - in general and on white_space (the white_space part was answered).
> I don't understand when (which files) or exactly how to get (for
> instance) "key=selection,bold" to work.
>
> The manual indicates bold & italic can be used for any named_style
> defined in filetypes.common.  Yes?
> And the bold, italic could be used in any filetypes.* (except for conf
> files - think I read somewhere).

Works for me, using alt.conf, the alternate colour scheme distributed
with Geany (note don't edit the system one, copy it into your
config/colorschemes directory, then you can delete it after you mess
it up :) change "comment_line=comment" to
"comment_line=comment,italic", save, and change to that scheme (note,
that means if its already selected change to something else then back,
schemes are only loaded when first selected), go to a tab with a
language with line comments, say C++, and viola italic line comments.

>
> But I can't get it to work.
> For instance, in filetypes.css, the comment is,
> "[styling]
> # Edit these in the colorscheme .conf file instead"

Colour schemes are not usually language specific, by default similar
syntactic elements eg comments, numbers, typenames are mapped by the
filetypes.xxx file to the same named style in all filetypes.  This
makes multiple filetypes feel similar, you get used to "bold yellow is
a typename" no matter the filetype.

Hence the comment in the filetypes.css file (and most) to keep the
filetypes file as a mapping and let the colour scheme define the
actual style, not hard code style info in the filetypes file.

If you really wanted css to be different to all the other languages
you would need to ignore the above comment, but then colour schemes
would not work for css.

>
> But entering into a color scheme.conf file, anything like:
> selection=selection,italic or *any other* named_style from
> filetypes.common that I tried, then saving & reloading, nothing changes
> in any files I then view.
>

Selection isn't a lexical element style, its an editor style, so its
imposed over the lexical style, my comment really only applied to
lexical elements styles.  Editor styles may have different semantics
since they do different things.

> If I wanted selection (or pick another named style) to be italic or
> bold, in .css files, exactly how do you do that?

See above.

>
> I'm assuming that for a named_style, colors can be specified, and on a
> separate line, specify it be italic or bold, if the style involves text?
> Again, pick any named style.

No, you can define a style, then define a different style to be the
previous one but also bold or italic as in the example I gave above.

>
> * TRANSLUCENCY:
> > "Translucency is really only useful and visible if you set background colour."
> The manual says,
> #translucency - Translucency for the CURRENT_LINE (1st argument) and the
> SELECTION (selected text - 2nd argument). Values between 0 and 255 are
> accepted.  Note for Windows 95, 98 and ME users: keep this value at 256
> to disable translucency otherwise Geany might crash. Only the first and
> second arguments are interpreted.  Example: translucency=256;256;false;false
>
> Do you mean "set (default) background color for the color scheme, like:
> > [named_styles]
> >
> > default=#fff;#000;true;true
> Or set background colors for selection (selected text) and
> current_line?  Current_line only sets background.
>
> So background color of both selection and current_line are set, as is
> the default background.  Translucency still has no effect for me.  It
> does say, "for the current line" (meaning color) and "the Selection".
>
>
> Maybe I need to know which color (background of what?) that translucency
> affects?
> The explanation wording seemed fairly clear, but you seem to indicate
> something else (I'm unclear from your reply "only useful & visible if
> you set background color."
> Could someone give an example of which colors would appear translucent,
> given what settings for the 2 listed styles & default colors?
>

There are a number of things that set the background colour or
otherwise affect the standard style, current line, selection, line
marker, search marker.  These can overlap. If the colours are opaque
then only one will be shown for any piece of text or it may overwrite
the text.  The translucency setting controls how the colours mix when
applied to the same text.  The default value 256 uses some built in
mixing but set say the selection value (second number on the
"translucency=" line) to 255 and it hides everything because 255 means
opaque.  Note that the "translucency=" line is in the [styling]
section of the file, its not in [named_styles] section, so its a
setting, not a named style and it may not be available in colour
schemes.

The colours chosen for the selection by the style are mixed into the
display as controlled by the transparency.  Thats what I meant above
when I cautioned that the semantics of editor styles differ from
lexical element styles because the editor styles are used in different
ways for different purposes.

Cheers
Lex