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
+## Colorschemes
-Micro comes with a number of colorschemes by default. Here is the list:
+To change your colorscheme, press Ctrl-e in micro to bring up the command
+prompt, and type:
-* default: this is the simplest colorscheme. It uses 16 colors which are
- set by your terminal
+```
+set colorscheme twilight
+```
-* solarized: this is the solarized colorscheme.
- You should have the solarized color palette in your terminal to use it.
+(or whichever colorscheme you choose).
-* solarized-tc: this is the solarized colorscheme for true color, just
- make sure your terminal supports true color before using it and that the
- MICRO_TRUECOLOR environment variable is set to 1 before starting micro.
+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.
-* monokai: this is the monokai colorscheme and is micro's default colorscheme
- (as well as sublime text's). It requires true color to
- look perfect, but the 256 color approximation looks very good as well.
+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.
-* atom-dark-tc: this colorscheme is based off of Atom's "dark" colorscheme.
- It requires true color to look good.
+* 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`.
-To enable one of these colorschemes just run the command `set colorscheme solarized`.
-(or whichever one you choose).
+* 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.
+ In addition your terminal must support it (usually indicated by setting `$COLORTERM`
+ to `truecolor`).
+ 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:
+
+### 256 color
+
+These should work and look nice in most terminals. I recommend these
+themes the most.
+
+* `monokai` (also the `default` colorscheme)
+* `zenburn`
+* `gruvbox`
+* `darcula`
+* `twilight`
+* `railscast`
+* `bubblegum`
+
+### 16 color
-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).
+These may vary widely based on the 16 colors selected for your terminal.
-They are only about 18 lines in total.
+* `simple`
+* `solarized` (must have the solarized color palette in your terminal to use this colorscheme properly)
+* `cmc-16`
+* `cmc-paper`
+* `geany`
-Basically to create the colorscheme you need to link highlight groups with actual colors.
-This is done using the `color-link` command.
+### True color
+
+True color requires your terminal to support it. This means that the environment variable
+`COLORTERM` should have the value `truecolor`, `24bit`, or `24-bit`. In addition, to enable
+true color in micro, the environment variable `MICRO_TRUECOLOR` must be set to 1.
+
+* `solarized-tc`: this is the solarized colorscheme for true color.
+* `atom-dark-tc`: this colorscheme is based off of Atom's "dark" colorscheme.
+* `cmc-tc`: A true colour variant of the cmc theme. It requires true color to
+ look its best. Use cmc-16 if your terminal doesn't support true color.
+* `gruvbox-tc`: The true color version of the gruvbox colorscheme
+* `github-tc`: The true color version of the Github colorscheme
+
+## Creating a Colorscheme
+
+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).
+
+Custom colorschemes should be placed in the `~/.config/micro/colorschemes` directory.
+
+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:
There are three different ways to specify the color.
-Color terminals usually have 16 colors that are preset by the user. This means that
-you cannot depend on those colors always being the same. You can use those colors with
-the names `black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white` and the bright variants
-of each one (brightblack, brightred...).
+Color terminals usually have 16 colors that are preset by the user. This means
+that you cannot depend on those colors always being the same. You can use those
+colors with the names `black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white`
+and the bright variants of each one (brightblack, brightred...).
-Then you can use the terminals 256 colors by using their numbers 1-256 (numbers 1-16 will
-refer to the named colors).
+Then you can use the terminals 256 colors by using their numbers 1-256 (numbers
+1-16 will refer to the named colors).
-If the user's terminal supports true color, then you can also specify colors exactly using
-their hex codes. If the terminal is not true color but micro is told to use a true color colorscheme
-it will attempt to map the colors to the available 256 colors.
+If the user's terminal supports true color, then you can also specify colors
+exactly using their hex codes. If the terminal is not true color but micro is
+told to use a true color colorscheme it will attempt to map the colors to the
+available 256 colors.
-Generally colorschemes which require true color terminals to look good are marked with a `-tc` suffix.
+Generally colorschemes which require true color terminals to look good are
+marked with a `-tc` suffix and colorschemes which supply a white background are
+marked with a `-paper` suffix.
---
-Colorschemes can be placed in the `~/.config/micro/colorschemes` directory to be used.
+Here is a list of the colorscheme groups that you can use:
+
+* default (color of the background and foreground for unhighlighted text)
+* comment
+* identifier
+* constant
+* statement
+* symbol
+* preproc
+* type
+* special
+* underlined
+* error
+* todo
+* statusline (Color of the statusline)
+* tabbar (Color of the tabbar that lists open files)
+* indent-char (Color of the character which indicates tabs if the option is
+ enabled)
+* line-number
+* gutter-error
+* gutter-warning
+* cursor-line
+* current-line-number
+* color-column
+* ignore
+* divider (Color of the divider between vertical splits)
+
+Colorschemes must be placed in the `~/.config/micro/colorschemes` directory to
+be used.
+
+---
+
+In addition to the main colorscheme groups, there are subgroups that you can
+specify by adding `.subgroup` to the group. If you're creating your own custom
+syntax files, you can make use of your own subgroups.
+
+If micro can't match the subgroup, it'll default to the root group, so it's
+safe and recommended to use subgroups in your custom syntax files.
+
+For example if `constant.string` is found in your colorscheme, micro will us
+that for highlighting strings. If it's not found, it will use constant instead.
+Micro tries to match the largest set of groups it can find in the colorscheme
+definitions, so if, for examle `constant.bool.true` is found then micro will use
+that. If `constant.bool.true` is not found but `constant.bool` is found micro
+will use `constant.bool`. If not, it uses `constant`.
+
+Here's a list of subgroups used in micro's built-in syntax files.
+
+* comment.bright (Some filetypes have distinctions between types of comments)
+* constant.bool
+* constant.bool.true
+* constant.bool.false
+* constant.number
+* constant.specialChar
+* constant.string
+* constant.string.url
+* identifier.class (Also used for functions)
+* identifier.macro
+* identifier.var
+* preproc.shebang (The #! at the beginning of a file that tells the os what
+ script interpreter to use)
+* symbol.brackets (`{}()[]` and sometimes `<>`)
+* symbol.operator (Color operator symbols differently)
+* symbol.tag (For html tags, among other things)
+* type.keyword (If you want a special highlight for keywords like `private`)
+
+In the future, plugins may also be able to use color groups for styling.
+
+
+## Syntax files
+
+The syntax files are written in yaml-format and specify how to highlight
+languages.
+
+Micro's builtin syntax highlighting tries very hard to be sane, sensible and
+provide ample coverage of the meaningful elements of a language. Micro has
+syntax files built in for over 100 languages now! However, there may be
+situations where you find Micro's highlighting to be insufficient or not to your
+liking. The good news is that you can create your own syntax files, and place them
+in `~/.config/micro/syntax` and Micro will use those instead.
+
+### Filetype definition
+
+You must start the syntax file by declaring the filetype:
+
+```
+filetype: go
+```
+
+### Detect definition
+
+Then you must provide information about how to detect the filetype:
+
+```
+detect:
+ filename: "\\.go$"
+```
+
+Micro will match this regex against a given filename to detect the filetype. You
+may also provide an optional `header` regex that will check the first line of
+the file. For example:
+
+```
+detect:
+ filename: "\\.ya?ml$"
+ header: "%YAML"
+```
+
+### Syntax rules
+
+Next you must provide the syntax highlighting rules. There are two types of
+rules: patterns and regions. A pattern is matched on a single line and usually a
+single word as well. A region highlights between two patterns over multiple
+lines and may have rules of its own inside the region.
+
+Here are some example patterns in Go:
+
+```
+rules:
+ - special: "\\b(break|case|continue|default|go|goto|range|return)\\b"
+ - statement: "\\b(else|for|if|switch)\\b"
+ - preproc: "\\b(package|import|const|var|type|struct|func|go|defer|iota)\\b"
+```
+
+The order of patterns does matter as patterns lower in the file will overwrite
+the ones defined above them.
+
+And here are some example regions for Go:
+
+```
+- constant.string:
+ start: "\""
+ end: "\""
+ rules:
+ - constant.specialChar: "%."
+ - constant.specialChar: "\\\\[abfnrtv'\\\"\\\\]"
+ - constant.specialChar: "\\\\([0-7]{3}|x[A-Fa-f0-9]{2}|u[A-Fa-f0-9]{4}|U[A-Fa-f0-9]{8})"
+
+- comment:
+ start: "//"
+ end: "$"
+ rules:
+ - todo: "(TODO|XXX|FIXME):?"
+
+- comment:
+ start: "/\\*"
+ end: "\\*/"
+ rules:
+ - todo: "(TODO|XXX|FIXME):?"
+```
+
+Notice how the regions may contain rules inside of them. Any inner rules that
+are matched are then skipped when searching for the end of the region. For
+example, when highlighting `"foo \" bar"`, since `\"` is matched by an inner
+rule in the region, it is skipped. Likewise for `"foo \\" bar`, since `\\` is
+matched by an inner rule, it is skipped, and then the `"` is found and the
+string ends at the correct place.
+
+You may also explicitly mark skip regexes if you don't want them to be
+highlighted. For example:
+
+```
+- constant.string:
+ start: "\""
+ end: "\""
+ skip: "\\."
+ rules: []
+```
+
+#### Includes
+
+You may also include rules from other syntax files as embedded languages. For
+example, the following is possible for html:
+
+```
+- default:
+ start: "<script.*?>"
+ end: "</script.*?>"
+ rules:
+ - include: "javascript"
+
+- default:
+ start: "<style.*?>"
+ end: "</style.*?>"
+ rules:
+ - include: "css"
+```
-### Syntax files
+## Syntax file headers
-The syntax files specify how to highlight certain languages.
+Syntax file headers are an optimization and it is likely you do not need to
+worry about them.
-In progress...
+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).
projects / micro.git / blobdiff