im sorry if this has been asked before but i cannot find it anywhere.

i'd like to change the general background color of the text editor window of a theme to a specific value. i have located the theme xml files but none of the names look right and stabbing in the dark is taking forever.

This change could be for all languages.

Mac Version 16.10.0.22

Thanks, TD

I haven't used the Unix/Linux version of UE. However if the theme XML file is arranged in a similar fashion to the Windows version, the setting you seek is actually several settings. You need to find the section of the XML that is tagged <Languages>. In that section you will find up groups tagged <Language Name="xxxx"> and then under that tags like this <ColorPair Category="Color Group 1" Foreground="#123456" Background="#123456" Auto="true"> It is the values that are Background= that you have to change. Unfortunately you cannot do a global change because the Background= item is also in the Editor section and you may not want to change those values. The Auto="true" or Auto="false" specifies that the color group does or does not use the same background color as normal text uses.

I'm not recommending a change to the XML theme file either as the primary solution to a simple problem. The GUI interface is the right way to go in that case. However if he does want to change the background color for all languages as he stated in his post, then the fastest way is through editing changes to the XML theme file. That said, he would have to be very careful of the way he does it if he uses a REGEX find/replace command. Obviously this should be done on a copy of a theme file first to make sure that there were no unexpected changes.

One of the reasons I'm working on the theme map is because the Application selections are not clear. The Editor selections are easier to understand. For the language map the settings are clear for text, comments, alternate block comments, strings and numbers. The up to 20 color groups per language are named Color Group 1 to Color Group 20 instead of whatever "custom" name they display in the GUI - Keywords, Commands, Operators and so on. This is unfortunate but does map in the same order for all of the languages and in the same order as they are displayed in the GUI.

Thanks for the quick replies. I will try the suggested edits.

I would definitely copy an existing theme and edit to ensure protection of the original.

TD