Snippery 1.2: Syntax Highlighting and Color Schemes

Snippery 1.2 will be able to improve the snippets preview of several programming languages via syntax highlighting, so it will be easier to read the code (specially when dealing with HTML syntax and you want to focus on the content, for instance).

Snippery 1.2 provides default color schemes for the syntax highlighting feature for every supported programming language via the app Preferences, but you can change those individually or reset to hardcoded ones if you want.

Syntax Highlighting

By default, Snippery will try to detect HTML and PHP syntax on new text fragments, defining them accordingly and applying the associated syntax highlighting. If the new snippet corresponds to any other of the supported programming languages, or if they are not automatically detected, you can define the kind of snippet between the available options: HTML, JavaScript, PHP and Xojo; a list that I expect to grow in future releases!

Color schemes

Syntax highlighting is a good thing, but I know that some users want to customize too some visuals when using a text editor… and here is where fits the new Color Schemes feature!

From Snippery 1.2 you can access this feature from View > Color Schemes menu. This will open a new Editor where you will be able to add new color schemes, edit existing ones or delete those you don’t want to use anymore. Of course you will be able to export all the available color schemes and import them (maybe if you want to share them with other users).

And since Snippery is a bit geeky… you can export the selected Color Schemes from the editor to the main window in order to save them as a new snippet in JSON format. Of course, you also will be able to create (or edit) a new snippet to write new color schemes definitions using JSON syntax. Afterwards, you just have to drag such text selection and drop it over the Color Scheme window to create a new entry.

Once created, the available color schemes will be listed on the View > Color Scheme menu, so you just have to choose the desidered one in order to apply it on the main window.

Take into consideration that the selected color scheme supersedes the color combination defined by the syntax highlighting defaults; something that is the expected behaviour, by the way.

What if you want to use any of the available color schemes as the default for the syntax highlighting of any of the supported programming languages? No problem! Just have to change to the Code tab on the Preferences window, select the language syntax highlighting whose color combination you want to change, open the Color Scheme Editor, drag the desired entry and drop it over the Preferences window! In addition, you can write the desired color scheme as JSON syntax in a new snippet, drag the selected text and drop it over the Preferences window.

The following video shows you how works all the options available for syntax highlighting and color schemes. As always, you can learn more about current Snippery features, download a trial or buy your license from Snippery’s product page.