Ultraedit has the the configuration for the colors of Syntax highlighting languages in somewhere else than wordfile.txt
a good idea may be to consider including color configuration inside this wordfile.txt. So when we import a syntax configuration, we may avoid reconfigure colors every time.
I'll have to reconfigure every time I install or reinstall UltraEdit. This is not better. Or when I'm updating the wordfile from work to home with a new language.
The colors are the main part of syntax highlighting, so why after hours of creating a new language for the wordfile I still have to lose a lot of time when I put that language in other UltraEdit.
And... if the colors that are inside the language file with correct colors... why should I change them?
The colors should be in an independent and separate file perhaps. The fact is that now a days it's not comfortable to set up colors so many times.
If you update an existing installation of UltraEdit the syntax colors are not changed. And if you have two PCs with UltraEdit, why not simply copying the whole uedit32.ini, if both computers have identical UltraEdit installation. Then all settings including the syntax highlighting colors are also copied.
The syntax highlighting settings are stored in the uedit32.ini in the sections [Language 1 Colors]. So you can also copy only these sections to the uedit32.ini of the other computer.
I simply set up my preferred syntax highlighting color settings only once for the first language and then copied the settings in the section to all other 19 language sections. So all languages have the same color scheme. I was not forced to change that in the last five years.
Sorry, but I can't really understand what is your problem.
Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
Mofi... it's not a problem, it is a suggestion. May be this suggestion it's only useful to me.
When I create a new language SH (Syntax Highlighting), I always try to reproduce the same colors from the original editor I'm replacing.
This means that the file for inno setup that I submit, has the same SH than Inno Setup editor, and I only make a few changes sometimes when I think that's meaningful. Are the functions and shortcuts of Uedit what I like most.
To share SH files with others having the colors configuration inside the SH could mean that new user of SH file only have to put it inside the wordfile without having to configure colors. That's all.
Now take a look that to keep all this configurations I have to save a part of wordfile.txt, a part of uedit.ini file, taglists.
This doesn't seems to me to be so confortable. That's what I mean. These files aren't in the same folder. It's so boring to save and restore.
On my computers all UltraEdit files with settings are in the same folder, the ini file, the wordfile, the tagfile and all other files. I have explained how to setup such an easy to copy setup several times in the forum and it's also described in the help of UltraEdit if you read carefully all topics about the configuration files.
Well, it your special case it's a little bit difficult to spread all syntax and language specific settings to all other users especially if the other users also have their own settings which should not be overwritten.
But the language settings extraction process from your settings and the import process for the other users could be made with UltraEdit macros.
You can write a macro to collect all settings for a language from the various configuration files to a single text file. This file could be placed on a server with a second UltraEdit macro, which imports the settings from this file to the configuration files of the other users.
I think this macro method is better than IDM would implement your suggestion because the macro method does not cause downward compatibility problems and is highly configurable by yourself.
Best regards from an UC/UE/UES for Windows user from Austria
I like Margoth's suggestion, but I think it would work better if you could specify the default colors in the wordfile and then these could be overwridden/configured as normal (with the color config stored in the INI file). That way when you add a new language it can have the colors the person who created the syntax highlighting setup intended and then change them if you want.
A "Reset Colors to Language Defaults" button would also be useful in this case, since you might replace one language with another in your wordfile and so the colors would already be configured for the previous language.
I think this would only require minor changes to the wordfile setup. I'm envisioning something like this:
In a philosophic point of view, I agree with Margoth. I think syntax highlighting colors should be defined at the same place that the keywords.
But the point of view adopted by IDM is comprehensible too, and lots of
users are familiar with it. A compromise is the solution from scallanh (in my opinion, defining things at two different places is source of confusion).
The right questions are:
"How many times do I redefine syntax highlighting?"
"How many time does it take to me to transfer all the settings?"
"How many time will my suggestion takes to IDM to implement"
"What is my request's real improvement for UltraEdit?"
IDM do a really good and useful job, personally I prefer they spend time to improve the functionalities (e.g improving the macro language).
Never forget: "Above the clouds, The sky is blue and the sun shine"
