The KWrite Handbook
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# Chapter 5. Highlighting

The Configure Highlighting dialog consists of two pages, Defaults and Highlighting Modes. The user can select which page to view by clicking on the appropriate tab at the top of the dialog

Items available on the Defaults page are as follows:

Default Item Styles

  The user can configure the default appearance for particular items. This would allow a programmer to more easily identify different items (types of entries) in his or her code.

  Item

    This drop down list offers a variety of items that the user might want to highlight. They include Normal for text does not fit in any of the other categories, Comment, String, Keyword and many more. Not all of these entries will need to be configured for every language and so may be selected as needed. The options in the rest of this section apply to the entry selected in this box.

  Normal

    This allows the user to choose the item's normal (unselected) color. This is done by means of a color selection dialog box, a further explanation of which may be found in the Colors section of Configure KWrite.

  Bold

    This option determines whether or not the item should be displayed in bold text.

  Italic

    This option determines whether or not the item should be displayed in italic text.

  Selected

    This allows the user to choose the item's color when selected. This is done by means of a color selection dialog box, a further explanation of which may be found in the Colors section of Configure KWrite.

Default Font

  Here the user can choose the default font for all text.

  Family

    This is used to choose the font family. The default is Fixed. For most programming purposes, a monospaced font (one in which a w takes up the same amount of space as an i) may be the best choice.

  Size

    The font size can be changed here. The default is 12 points.

  Charset

    Here the user can choose which character set to work in.

Items on the Highlight Modes tab allow the user to define more specific highlighting depending on the language style.

One need not set every available option, items not configured specifically will use the default configuration specified on the previous (Defaults tab.

Config Select

  This group of options is used to customize the highlighting styles for each programming language type. Any changes you made in other areas of this dialog apply only to this type.

  Highlight

    This is used to choose the language type to configure

  Item

    This is to choose the syntax item to configure. Remember this only configures this item for this language.

  As an example, if the user wished to configure the appearance of "comments" while writing C++, she or he could choose C++ in the Highlight drop down list, and then choose Comment in the Item drop down list. To have "comments" look the same across all languages, the user would need to configure this in the Defaults page of this dialog box while leaving "comments" unconfigured within the more specific Highlight Modes page.

Item Style

  Here the user can configure the general appearance of the above selected item. Checking the Default checkbox causes the default style as configured on the previous tab to be set, or the appearance can be configured directly. The available options are the same as on the Defaults tab: Normal, Selected, Bold and Italic.

Highlight Auto Select

  KWrite can apply syntax highlighting automatically, depending on the file extension or mime-type of the opened file. The defaults are fairly comprehensive, but users that regularly edit files with non-standard extensions can add them here. Wildcards are allowed in the File Extensions text box. For example, the default entry for the C++ language is `*.cpp;*.cc;*.C;*.h`. Opening a file called `foo.h` would automatically apply the C++ style to it.

Item Font

  Here the user can choose the font for the selected item.

  The default style can be applied by checking the Default checkbox or the user can choose a specific font Family, Size and Charset. The available options are the same as those on the Defaults tab.

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