Some documentation updates

This commit is contained in:
Zachary Yedidia
2020-01-02 15:10:28 -05:00
parent eb2b546600
commit 50ff45c213
5 changed files with 113 additions and 72 deletions

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This help page aims to cover two aspects of micro's syntax highlighting engine:
- How to create colorschemes and use them.
- How to create syntax files to add to the list of languages micro can highlight.
* How to create colorschemes and use them.
* How to create syntax files to add to the list of languages micro can highlight.
## Colorschemes
To change your colorscheme, press Ctrl-E in micro to bring up the command
To change your colorscheme, press Ctrl-e in micro to bring up the command
prompt, and type:
```
set colorscheme monokai
set colorscheme twilight
```
(or whichever colorscheme you choose).
Micro comes with a number of colorschemes by default. Modern terminals tend to
have three different kinds of color support. The most common is 256 color where
the terminal provides 256 standardized colors (except the first 16 may be configured
by the user). A 256-color theme requires a terminal with 256 color support and
is the most portable.
Micro comes with a number of colorschemes by default. The colorschemes that you
can display will depend on what kind of color support your terminal has.
A 16-color theme uses the 16 user-configurable colors (or 16 default colors on
old terminals). These colorschemes are guranteed to work, but won't look great
unless the 16 colors are configured to the user's liking. Using a 16-color theme
will also preserve the terminal's theme because the terminal usually uses its 16
colors for prompts or other coloring.
Modern terminals tend to have a palette of 16 user-configurable colors (these
colors can often be configured in the terminal preferences), and additional
color support comes in three flavors.
Some terminals support "true color" with 16 million colors (using standard RGB values).
There is no one standard for this color support among terminals so this method
is not guaranteed to work. Usually truecolor must also be enabled by the user. The
colorschemes using true color will look exactly as intended. If true color is not
supported, a true color colorscheme will approximate its colors to 256-color.
* 16-color: A colorscheme that uses the 16 default colors will always work but
will only look good if the 16 default colors have been configured to the user's
liking. Using a colorscheme that only uses the 16 colors from the terminal palette
will also preserve the terminal's theme from other applications since the terminal
will often use those same colors for other applications. Default colorschemes
of this type include `simple` and `solarized`.
* 256-color: Almost all terminals support displaying an additional 240 colors on
top of the 16 user-configurable colors (creating 256 colors total). Colorschemes
which use 256-color are portable because they will look the same regardless of
the configured 16-color palette. However, the color range is fairly limited
due to the small number of colors available. Default 256-color colorschemes
include `monokai`, `twilight`, `zenburn`, `darcula` and more.
* true-color: Some terminals support displaying "true color" with 16 million
colors using standard RGB values. This mode will be able to support displaying
any colorscheme, but it should be noted that the user-configured 16-color palette
is ignored when using true-color mode (this means the colors while using the
terminal emulator will be slightly off). Not all terminals support true color
but at this point most do. True color support in micro is off by default but
can be enabled by setting the environment variable `MICRO_TRUECOLOR` to 1.
True-color colorschemes in micro typically end with `-tc`, such as `solarized-tc`,
`atom-dark-tc`, `material-tc`, etc... If true color is not enabled but a true
color colorscheme is used, micro will do its best to approximate the colors
to the available 256 colors.
Here is the list of colorschemes:
@@ -75,9 +90,12 @@ These require terminals that support true color and require `MICRO_TRUECOLOR=1`
Micro's colorschemes are also extremely simple to create. The default ones can
be found [here](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/tree/master/runtime/colorschemes).
They are only about 18-30 lines in total.
Custom colorschemes should be placed in the `~/.config/micro/colorschemes` directory.
Basically to create the colorscheme you need to link highlight groups with
A number of custom directives are placed in a `.micro` file. Colorschemes are
typically only 18-30 lines in total.
To create the colorscheme you need to link highlight groups with
actual colors. This is done using the `color-link` command.
For example, to highlight all comments in green, you would use the command:
@@ -218,7 +236,7 @@ You must start the syntax file by declaring the filetype:
filetype: go
```
#### Detect definition
### Detect definition
Then you must provide information about how to detect the filetype:
@@ -237,7 +255,7 @@ detect:
header: "%YAML"
```
#### Syntax rules
### Syntax rules
Next you must provide the syntax highlighting rules. There are two types of
rules: patterns and regions. A pattern is matched on a single line and usually a
@@ -316,3 +334,16 @@ example, the following is possible for html:
rules:
- include: "css"
```
## Syntax file headers
Syntax file headers are an optimization and it is likely you do not need to
worry about them.
Syntax file headers are files that contain only the filetype and the detection
regular expressions for a given syntax file. They have a `.hdr` suffix and are
used by default only for the pre-installed syntax files. Header files allow micro
to parse the syntax files much faster when checking the filetype of a certain
file. Custom syntax files may provide header files in `~/.config/micro/syntax` as
well but it is not necessary (only do this if you have many (100+) custom syntax
files and want to improve performance).