Extending color coding in Fire

Elements Fire
1

Don’t know if it’s on the wish list, but Fire could use some more color coding to identify the different kinds of code elements.

It’s all a bit too much black compared to other editors.

I know in the 80-90s it was all one color, but hey, in time you get to appreciate those colors … :wink:

1 Like
2

What exactly would you like to be more colorful?

3

Below I’ve put a comparison between Fire and Xcode. More color makes it, for my eyes, much more readable.

So colors for:

  • Class names
  • Parent class / protocol names
  • Method names
  • Local var names
  • Property/methods of instance vars (eg. item3.text and items.append)

Code editor in Fire:

image
image1326×1306 111 KB

Code editor in Xcode:

image
image1414×1334 146 KB

4

The problem is this knowledge adds a factor of 10x to the editor’s performance. Right now, the editor is so fast, even for huge files, because it highlights purely on language syntax, not on knowledge that depends on having the entire project parsed and understood by the compiler.

I don’t believe it’s worth the tradeoff.

5

Oke, that sounds reasonable. Let’s keep the speed then!

1 Like
6

I’m happy you agree :wink: