Joe's own editor: changing syntax highlighting

syntax-highlighting joe

6,276

Solution 1

To be very specific and change the dark blue on black highlighting for PHP scripts in Joe:

In Ubuntu 16.04 and with Joe 4.1-2, edit:

/usr/share/joe/syntax/php.jsf

And change:

=Constant_sq blue

To some other color of your choosing:

=Constant_sq yellow

As mentioned you'll need to edit the appropriate .jsf file for your scripting language of choice, and the affected variable. To fix XML recoloring, edit xml.jsf and change:

=Tag blue

=Tag yellow.

Solution 2

Coloring files could also reside in /etc/joe/syntax/, just copy appropriate file to ~/.joe/syntax/ and edit it.

6,276

PenguinLust

I chose this nickname as a homage to the old comic strip, Bloom County, and to express my affinity for Linux. I'm a software engineer living in Ottawa. My language of choice is C++.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

PenguinLust over 1 year

Unfortunately, when I try to edit an XML, trying to read that dark blue against black is murder. I am amazed that Googling "joe editor change highlighting" returns nothing! Is it really impossible to change the colours, while using the binary that came w/the RPM? I'm using joe 3.1
- Admin over 9 years
  
  Someone had the same problem. Give this Github a try. Welcome to U&L.SE
- Admin over 9 years
  
  @ECarterYoung Is that really the easiest way? I'm not sure what's more difficult to look at: dark blue against black or those jsf files.
- Admin over 9 years
  
  I found this, but there's no way to tel joeftyperc what highlighting to use unless you create a syntax file, which is whats at git hub
- Admin about 9 years
  
  You can also overwrite the colors globally in your .joerc file (e.g. in $HOME/.joerc, if missing copy from /etc/joe/joerc). For XML add a line saying "=Tag white". May cause collateral damage in other syntaxes.
- Admin over 6 years
  
  It would be nice if Joe had similar thing to Vim, which can be told that you are using dark screen background and it will use alternate coloring schema: vim.wikia.com/wiki/Better_colors_for_syntax_highlighting But no such luck I guess.
M. Lamb about 7 years

You can just create the directory.
nafmo over 4 years

Unfortunately support for these overrides have been removed in newer versions of Joe, so the solution no longer works. Since the answer is correct for the version this question was asked for, I have posted a new question here: unix.stackexchange.com/q/536796/151014