Syntax highlighting
To enable color syntax highlighting in XEmacs one needs to enter in init.el the following line:
By default XEmacs's colors are rather bleak. I prefer to have a
dark background, this is a sample of
how the colors look like in my XEmacs. (Note: One needs to
enable cascading style sheets (CSS) in the web browser to see
the colors.) To obtain these colors one needs to insert in custom.el the contents of this file.
Some people prefer a light background. Here is an example, and here is the necessary piece of text to achieve these colors.
Of course, the above needs to be only a first step in setting up
the colors. XEmacs has a user-friendly way of changing the colors,
fonts, etc, attributes which in XEmacs lingo are called faces.
Most colors you saw in the examples above are font-lock
faces. To customize them select from the menu on the top of the
XEmacs window Options -> Customize -> Emacs -> Faces -> Font Lock
Faces -> Font Lock Faces. XEmacs also has a huge number of more
obscure faces, to see them all select from the menu Options ->
Customize -> Face, and hit the Return key.
By pressing on the small triangle to the right of each face,
several lines with radio buttons will open. There one can change the
colors, fonts, sizes, etc. After doing that, right-click with the
mouse and choose set to apply the changes (non-permanently) and
then open a file to see how the colors look like. To save the changed
faces for future XEmacs sessions, go back to the list of faces, again
right-click with the mouse and choose save.
XEmacs accepts colors by name, that is, green, red, etc, or by their hexadecimal RGB number (like #ff0000 for
red, etc). On Unix there is a nifty program called xcolorsel which will show all the available colors, their
names and RGB numbers. Otherwise a list of colors can be found
here (also mirrored here).
XEmacs tips
