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Syntax colouring

The editor colours source code according to its language, making structure easy to read at a glance. Colouring is powered by Lexilla (the lexer library used by Notepad++ and SciTE), so a wide range of languages is supported out of the box.

How it works

A colorizer identifies the language and tags each token (keyword, string, comment, number, type, …); a theme maps each token category to a colour. Because every language speaks the same set of categories, switching the theme recolours all of them at once.

Choosing the language

The language is detected automatically when you open a file, in this order:

  1. An extension override you set in Preferences ▸ Syntax Colouring.
  2. An exact file-name match (e.g. Makefile, .gitignore).
  3. The file's extension.
  4. A first-line marker (e.g. a #! shebang or <?xml).

Use the Language menu to override the detected language for the current document when the automatic choice isn't what you want.

Settings

Preferences ▸ Syntax Colouring lets you:

  • Choose the active theme (and, with the Theme Editor, create or edit themes).
  • Toggle whole token categories on/off (e.g. turn off comment colouring) so they fall back to the default text colour.
  • Set extension overrides to force a file type to a specific language.

Add your own languages and themes

Colorizers and themes are plain JSON files you can edit or add without rebuilding — drop them in your user config directory and they override or extend the shipped set. The colorizer file also owns each language's extensions, keywords and token-style mapping.