Dark Mode for studio?

[kdmoyers]

I have recently become bedeviled by massive floaters in my right eye.  My whole right field of vision is a mess.
I've discovered that "dark mode" in my various computer windows helps enormously because the black blobs fade into the background, rather than stand out, swimming against the stark white.

Any chance for a dark mode in Winbatch Studio?

I was thinking I might be able to write a bit of winbatch that would sorta force "dark mode" on the Studio window without it's knowledge, but quickly got over my head.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/apply-windows-themes

there's also this utility: Dark Mode Any App https://darkmodeanyapp.com/ but I have no idea if I can trust them!

-K

[td]

If I remember correctly support for Windows dark mode requires Win 32 applications on Windows 10/11 to compile using C++ 17 because of the design of WinRT (WinRT is basically Windows kernel APIs exposed as COM interface accessed via C++ templates.) This means that WBS would require major changes that could involve a major rewrite. You don't want to know how many lines of code are in WBS.

You could use Windows 11 (10?) "Contrast Themes" to see most of WBS with a dark theme. This is a different setting than the "dark" mode setting under "color" as WBS will not recognize the latter. However, even using "Contrast Thems" the main editing area would still be the default client area color (white). On older versions of Windows, it was possible to change the default background color of client windows but I am not aware of a user-accessible setting for that on 11/10. Of course, just because I don't know about doesn't mean it doesn't exist someplace.

All that said, thanks for mentioning it. The suggestion will go on the possible enhancement list.

[td]

Thinking about it a little more we could examine the possibility of adding a background color setting to the Font option under View-> Options->Editor.

[kdmoyers]

If it's easy-ish to do, that would be great!

I could then flip the font color to white, and background black,
and probably would have to tweak the blue so it shows better against black.
Anyway, after some fiddling with colors, I'd have dark mode!

[td]

I know this is an aging post but I just remembered something. You can change the background color of WinBatch Studio's main editor window. 

Navigate to View-> Options-> File Types-> Syntax coloring... and select the Change... button next to the Background label. Of course, you will need to set it for each file type in the Filetype: dropdown list box of the File types tabbed dialog.

[kdmoyers]

Whoo hoo!! that works great!!  Thanks man!  Big improvement.

Question: there is one color not represented on that dialog:
the color of flow control words, like CASE, IF, ENDIF, RETURN
These show as a dark magenta which is a little tough to see against the black.
Is there a file or registry entry I can tweak to set that color?

[kdmoyers]

Is it the [COLORS] section of WIL.CLR?  It seems to define colors for
CON, EXT, CONSTANT, WED, newvar
what are these?

[kdmoyers]

I figured out
CON is control structures like IF, ENDIF, RETURN
CONSTANT is constants like @retNoExit, @true
EXT is extender function names
WED is WIL editor functions

This is a great quality of life improvement!

[td]

If you haven't already, you could write a simple script to change the wil.clr file color keys to your desired colors. That way you can easily restore them if you choose to upgrade to a new version WinBatch.

[kdmoyers]

Good idea!

[cssyphus]

Thanks very much Tony! And thanks to you, Kirby, for persisting in your quest.

I, too, am now happily using DarkMode in WinBatch Studio - and what a difference to the UX.

Tony, your tip re the WIL.CLR file enabled me to change the difficult-to-read-purple-on-black into a much lighter shade of purple that is pleasant to work with: ( CON=188,0,188 for those wondering )

Only one disgruntlement remains: when selecting CON text, the selected text is lime-green text on a light-grey background. Almost impossible to see. Is there a way to fix that final nuisance? But even as it is, I am quite gruntled with this DarkMode improvement.

[kdmoyers]

I felt unsure about the purple, tweaked it a few times, then switched to orange.

CON=255,128,0

which I like better.