MATLAB Schemer

This MATLAB package makes it easy to change the color scheme (a.k.a. theme) ofthe MATLAB display and GUI.

You can use Schemer to import a predefined color scheme, transfer your colorsettings between installations, or create your own color scheme.

A collection of color schemes is available in the schemes folder.Samples of these can be seen in schemes/README.md,and browsed in the folder schemes/screenshots.This is a static subtree copy of the contents of the repositorymatlab-schemes.

Importing a color scheme

Color schemes can be easily imported by running schemer_import at the MATLABcommand prompt, without needing any inputs. This will open a GUI to select thefile to import the color scheme from.

When importing a color scheme, most of the settings will change immediately.However, some settings will require MATLAB to be restarted:

• Variable highlighting colours
• Wavy underlines for errors
• Wavy underlines for warnings

For more details, see the documentation on the function schemer_import,available with help schemer_import.

Transferring a color scheme between MATLAB installations

If you are using a personalised color scheme in MATLAB, you may wish to saveit for yourself so you can re-implement it easily if you reintall MATLAB.Or you may wish to transfer your personalised color scheme from one machineto another. This section describes the steps relevant in either scenario.

On the source machine, run schemer_export to save a temporary color schemefile, and then transfer this file to the destination machine.

When importing the new color scheme, instead of running schemer_import withoutany inputs, you should run schemer_import(true). This passes a flag to tellthe function to not only import the colour preferences, but to also import yourboolean settings (such as whether to highlight the current cell/line, etc)from the file you exported from the source installation.

Reverting to the MATLAB default color scheme

Should you wish to revert to the set of colours which MATLAB ships with, youshould run schemer_import('schemes/default.prf').

This will import the MATLAB default theme from the stylesheet default.prfwhich comes as part of Schemer.

To restore the out-of-the-box state for boolean settings (such as whether tohighlight the current line) in addition to the colours, runschemer_import('schemes/default.prf', true).

You may be tempted to instead revert the colours by clicking theRestore Default Colors buttons in the Color pane of the MATLAB preferences.However, this will be less effective than importing the default colours throughSchemer because these buttons will not reset all the MATLAB colour preferences.(There is no reset button for the Editor display preferences pane, nor for theother language syntax supported by MATLAB, which is available in the EditorLanguages panel.)

Creating a color scheme for others to use

When creating a color scheme to share with the rest of the world, it isrecommended to ensure colours are chosen appropriately for all possiblesettings, even if they are not enabled.

For example, if you are creating a dark colour scheme, you may have cellhighlighting disabled but it would still be ill-advised to leave the backgroundhighlight colour for cell displays as the default pale beige because other usersmay have this setting enabled.

Exporting through the GUI

If you have made a custom color scheme using the MATLAB GUI to pick the colours,you can export the new color scheme with schemer_export.

Please note, this requires you to have visited all relevant panes of thePreferences window at least once since MATLAB was installed, even if thesettings have not been changed from the default.See the help for schemer_export for more details.

Porting a theme from a different editor

If you are converting a color scheme designed for another editor into a MATLABstylesheet, you may find it easier to start with a duplicate of the templatestylesheet develop/template_scheme.prf and copythe colours into this.

To understand which colour settings the parameter names correspond to, you canrefer to the annotated screenshot,develop/annotated_default.png.

The values for each colour in the .prf stylesheet must be recorded as singleRGB integers, with each colour channel in 8-bit (0-255), R as big endian,and a opaque alpha channel. Because the format for RGB colours in Java allowsfor an alpha channel and the integers are signed, all the colours you recordin your .prf file should be negative, spanning the range-16777216 (black, [0,0,0]) to -1 (white, [255,255,255]).

The text file for your pre-existing theme will typically specify its colous inhexadecimal format, or in terms of R, G, B values. You will needto convert the colours from this format into the format which MATLAB preferencefiles use to specify colours instead.The Schemer package comes with a utility functiondevelop/color2javaRGBint.mto help make this easier. See the color2javaRGBint documentation for moredetails.

Setting colours for additional languages

MATLAB supports syntax highlighting for several languanges in addition to its own.Currently these languages areMuPAD, TLC, VRML, C/C++, Java, VHDL, Verilog, and XML/HTML.The colours used for the syntax highlighting of all these languages can be setin the Languages subpanel of the Editor/Debugger pane in the Preferences window.

Typically, one will want to make a color scheme which has colours in theselanguages which match the colours of the analogous MATLAB syntax.By default, this is the behaviour which Schemer will perform.

Without specifying any inputs to schemer_export, an exported color scheme filewill contain only the colours used for MATLAB syntax highlighting and no otherlanguages, since it is expected that users will typically not set the coloursfor any of these languages. When this is loaded with schemer_import, the missingcolours for additional languages are automatically completed based on the MATLABsyntax.

If you do customise the colours for the additional language syntax highlighting,you can export this by setting an appropriate flag, such as schemer_export(3).For more details, see the schemer_export documentation.

If you are designing a color scheme and are very detail-oriented, you may like todo the following.

1. Configure the colours for the MATLAB syntax first in the Preferences > Colorspanel and Programming Tools subpanel, along with Editor/Debugger > Displaypreference pane for the Current line highlighting and Right-hand text limit.
2. Export the colorscheme with schemer_export('tmp.prf',1), excluding additionallanguage syntax from the export.
3. Load the colorscheme with schemer_import('tmp.prf'), which overwrites thesyntax for the additional languages with automatically inferred colours.
4. Open up the panel Preferences > Editor/Debugger > Languages and inspect thequality of the colorscheme in the addition languages.
5. Fix or improve any perceived issues with the colorscheme in the Languages panel.
6. Export the colorscheme again, but this time with schemer_export(3) to includethe customised colours for the additional languages.

Adding your scheme to this package

If you are particularly proud of your new color scheme (and why wouldn't you be)and would like to to share it with the world as part of the matlab-schemerpackage, this is possible!

Please head over to our daughter repository, matlab-schemes, which holds themaster copy of the color schemes issued here as part of Schemer in the schemesdirectory.

If you fork matlab-schemes, add your .prf file and issue a pull request,the new scheme will be reviewed and added to the repository.This content is then mirrored here using git subtree. For more details, seeour CONTRIBUTING.md.

Addendum

Requirements

Please note that Schemer requires MATLAB to be run with Java support enabled.

Further information

For details on how the method was implemented, seethis Undocumented Matlab article.