What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator)

Alan Kilborn

I’ve seen this before when I accidentally right-clicked instead of left-clicked on a color swatch box in the Style Configurator – does anyone know what the cross-hatching does? – I haven’t seen it have any kind of effect.

To wit:

Versus:

Michael Vincent

@Alan-Kilborn

I’m not sure, but I think it adds the colorStyle="1" to the style of the option you’re configuring. What does that mean?

For an example, I use Obsidian as my default style which has a dark background. Let’s say I’m configuring some element of a user defined language or maybe just text option or whatever your image above is for. If I use the bottom image - the one without cross hatching I will see grey text on a yellow background on an otherwise dark grey background supplied from Obsidian. If instead I use your top picture, the one with cross-hatching I will see grey text on the Obsidian background. Looking in the userdefined language XML, I’ll also now see the colorStyle="1" for that element.

So to me, it’s like kind of like cross-hatch means make the color transparent so the theme’s background color (whatever it may be) is the background for that “colour style”.

Does that make sense?

Cheers.

Ekopalypse

Oh man, I should have known that sooner, then I could have saved myself some work.

Thx @Alan-Kilborn @Michael-Vincent for bringing it up and discussing it.

Ekopalypse

By the way, I would say that this should be the standard for the UDL anyway.
I mean, if you set colorStyle=“0” as default, UDL would work better with themes.

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

if you set colorStyle=“0” as default, UDL would work better with themes.

Did you mean to say:

if you set colorStyle=“1” as default, UDL would work better with themes.

Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding something? If that’s the case can you explain a bit more what you mean in this context?

@Michael-Vincent and @Ekopalypse : Thanks for the replies.

Alan Kilborn

Interesting that I had not previously noticed this, posted 3 days ago: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/2662#issuecomment-611458747

@Michael-Vincent It even mentions the Obsidian theme. Maybe that is a popular one that I should check out.

I liked the poster’s original comment (later edited out for some reason): Who would have thought of right clicking boxes, amirite?

Michael Vincent

@Alan-Kilborn said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

Obsidian theme. Maybe that is a popular one that I should check out.

Many of the themes are woefully out of date as they have not been updated as sintilla lexer variables change. I have been updating my obsidian by hand since I use it so much. It’s a dark theme but not dark black background .

Cheers.

Alan Kilborn

@Michael-Vincent said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

Many of the themes are woefully out of date as they have not been updated as sintilla lexer variables change.

It seems like maybe we need “theme maintainers” much like there seems to be “language/translation maintainers” and “UDL maintainers”.

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

if you set colorStyle=“1” as default, UDL would work better with themes.

No, as far as I understand,
0 = default foreground and background
1 = default background
2 = default foreground

It seems like maybe we need “theme maintainers” much like there seems to be “language/translation maintainers” and “UDL maintainers”.

I thought about creating a python script based on the stylers.xml to
bring all themes to the same level but I’m unsure about the copyright stuff.

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

thought about creating a python script based on the stylers.xml to
bring all themes to the same level

I like that idea!

but I’m unsure about the copyright stuff.

What does this mean?

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

If you open the themes you will see that they have different licenses
and/or copyright statements or non at all.
What needs to be done if there is no license or copyright statement but an author stated?
What needs to be done on GPL2?

If one wants to bring all to the same level, all should have the same license, correct?

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse

Well, you could always create the script anyway, and power-users could benefit by updating their individual copies of the theme files. It might be the thing that finally kicks me over the hump to stop using the default theme. :-)

But, yes, I guess I am not sure how to answer the licensing question.

guy038

Hello, @michael-vincent, @ekopalypse, @alan-kilborn, and All,

@alan-kilborn said :

It might be the thing that finally kicks me over the hump to stop using the default theme. :-)

Me, too !

Best Regards

guy038

Ekopalypse

Let me think about it.

PeterJones

@Ekopalypse said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

0 = default foreground and background
1 = default background
2 = default foreground

Thanks for that. I hadn’t known either about the right click or the colorStyle attribute values (neither was previously officially documented)

PR#81 for preferences docs include describing the right-click on the color box to get the same behavior.

Docs PR#82 includes describing that behavior in both the configuration files details and in the UDL (same attribute values in both).

PeterJones

@PeterJones said in What is the cross-hatching for? (Style Configurator):

and in the UDL

And in case you didn’t know, my experiments show that the “inherit from default” for UDL inherits from the Style Configurator > … >Default Style colors, not from the UDL > Default Style: > Styler. I made sure to document that.

And also found a bug in the UDL color box slash indicators.

So this discussion prompted two PRs and a bug report so far. Thanks. :-)

PeterJones

Thanks for that.

in case I wasn’t clear, thanks to everyone in this thread, who all contributed to the understanding.

Alan Kilborn

And there’s more to come yet:

@Ekopalypse said:

I thought about creating a python script based on the stylers.xml to
bring all themes to the same level

Hopeful cross-link?: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/52587

guy038

Hello @peterjones, @alan-kilborn, @ekopalypse, @michael-vincent, and All,

I have not migrated to v7.8.6, yet. However, I noticed, since a very long time, the bug you mentioned, Peter, in the link below :

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/npp-usermanual/pull/81#issuecomment-614183652

To produce that issue, where both the background and foreground colors are available, where only one should be :

Start Notepad++ ( I did this test with the release v7.8.5 )
Run for instance, Settings > Style configurator
Verify that the Default ( stylers.xml) theme is selected
Select the Global Styles language
And select, for instance, the Mark Style 1 style
By default :
- The foreground color is not available and its color is a light grey
- The background color is available and its color is a light blue ( 0,255,255 )

Now, switch from the Default ( stylers.xml) theme to the next Bespin theme
And switch back, immediately, to the Default ( stylers.xml) theme
Re-select the Mark Style 1 style
This time :
- As before, the background color is available and its color is a light blue ( 0,255,255 )
- But, the foreground color is, now, available and its color is a dark red ( 204,0,0 ) ??!!

Best regards,

guy038

PeterJones

@guy038 ,

Weird. When I use my normal v7.8.5 portable, it never shows Global Styles > Mark 1 with greyed foreground. If I take a fresh v7.8.5 portable, it does start with Mark 1 greyed, and if I follow your path to Bespin and back, it gets ungreyed when I’m back in default sylers.xml.

Weird.