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Configurable Syntax highlighting for R
Do we need a better syntax highlighting that we already have? I found this supported in ace, but am not sure if we are using it.
As discussed, the syntax is highlighted but the colors just don't stand out very much. Looks like some colors are defined as css embedded in ace/theme-chrome.js. We could add some css or change the file if necessary.
The colors were probably designed for a white background, but even on white they don't stand out very much:
I suspect that this is a personal preference issue. For example, I like subtle highlighting, but I have seen other people's settings that look like a flock of parrots is attacking you, so maybe the only solution to this is to add support for per-user CSS customization.
Maybe a dropdown menu allowing users to select their highlighting theme? I believe the theme is currently being set in this line. One could pick some of the popular ace themes and then create a simple dropdown in the navbar that will allow a user to switch themes?
I would be happy to submit a pull request if this feature seems worth pursuing.
Thanks @ramnathv!
I'm not sure what the most popular themes are, and we certainly can't include all 280K of them. I guess it seems pretty low-priority to me, but if people keep thinking that there isn't syntax highlighting maybe we'll do something about it.
From this theme explorer/editor it looks like we're using the least pronounced theme right now: http://ace.c9.io/tool/mode_creator.html
I really would rather avoid providing a menu simply for the highlighting theme. This is something that would change very rarely, and a menu takes a huge amount of space. This could go in an options menu somewhere, but it really really should not take any visual space on the default presentation.
I agree. One option is to allow the user to specify the theme in rcloud.conf. While I agree that syntax highlighting is purely cosmetic, some of us are quite wedded to our preferences. For example, I like the solarized light theme. I hacked directly at the rcloud javascript to modify this for my local edition, but it would be useful to allow specifying using a configuration.
Just my two cents :)
RCloud is really awesome. You guys should do a blog post about it sometime. I plan to do one soon, to expose the rest of the rstats community to its awesomeness!!
I run a solarized iTerm myself, so I sympathize, but it really clashes with the rest of the RCloud style.
rcloud.conf is per-deployment, not per-user, so I don't think it really solves the problem. I think the place for this is in per-user global settings. We don't really have a GUI for it at this point, but we should eventually :)
@ramnathv If it's not much trouble, please post a screenshot of your instance. I am just wondering how the interface looks like.