Revert Syntax Colors to previous version?

[David B. Trout]

I just upgraded from EDP 15 to EDP 16, and now my syntax colors are all different!

How do I restore the colors that the previous version was using?

[psguru]

Unfortunately, not possible.

[David B. Trout]

Unfortunately, not possible.

Well THAT sucks.

Can you at least tell me WHICH syntax elements the previous version supported? (so I know which ones I need to change?)

I don't like the current colors so I want to change them, but I'd rather not have to go through each and every one (there are a LOT of them now!). I'd rather just change only the ones I need to change in order to obtain the same syntax coloring as the previous version provided.

Can you at least tell me THAT?

[psguru]

It's not really possible in the general case. There's no one-to-one match between version 16 syntax elements and version 15. The new syntax parsing is described at https://blog.prestosoft.com/2024/11/exa ... s-and.html, and, as I said before, there's way to revert it.

Perhaps you could post two screenshots, with before (v. 15) and after (v. 16) syntax highlighting, ant point out what specifically you would like to customize.

[David B. Trout]

Perhaps you could post two screenshots, with before (v. 15) and after (v. 16) syntax highlighting, and point out what specifically you would like to customize.

Unfortunately such was not possible at the time I posted my question and you responded with your suggestion, since the installation of v16 automatically uninstalled my v15 (*). So even if I still had v16 installed when you asked your question, (Note: I've since uninstalled v16 and have reverted back to v15 instead), there was, at the time, no way to to perform the comparison.

It should also be noted too, that I tried doing what you suggested on my own, but was unable to set the same colors due to the new v16's design: its color settings dialog does not allow one to choose/set any color. It only allows you to set/choose only specific fixed colors, but not any color like you could in previous versions. I tried setting the same exact color as before and it wouldn't let me. I'd enter the same RGB value first, and then tried to set the same Hue, Saturation and Luminosity, and as soon as I did, the RGB values would be changed! The same thing happened when I tried setting the HSL values first too: as soon as I then tried setting the same RGB values, the HSL values would be changed!

It's because of v16's new color dialog is different, It's not the ordinary standard color dialog. It's some custom color dialog that only lets you set specific fixed colors. It doesn't let you set ANY color like v15 did. Yet another deal breaker for me.

I'm sticking with v15 for now until EDP can manage to get this SNAFU straightened out.

Thanks anyway.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND I'm still a big fan of EDP and like it a LOT!

Just not this new version, unfortunately.

_____________________________________________________________
(*) Which is yet another issue with the new(?) design, albeit with the installer, not EDP itself: it insists on installing new versions into a completely different named installation directory! That breaks things on my system, and on a few other customers as well. Several of my existing products allow you to override (customize) their default settings for which comparison tool you want it to use, and if the location (directory) where the product is installed changes whenever you install a new version (and the old version gets automatically removed), then suddenly things break on my system whenever a new version of EDP is installed!

Why can't you stick with a plain generic name like "ExamDiff Pro" that never changes? I had to change my other products to "ExamDiff Pro 16" to fix things so my other products worked properly! And THEN, when I uninstalled v16 due to the syntax coloring issue and fell back to v15 instead, things broke again(!!) and I had to change them all back to old directory (PATH) again! Sheesh!

I'm a software developer and I'm here to say it's not that hard to stick with the same installation directory! What's the deal? Why do you keep changing it with each new version? It's not a different product! It's just a different VERSION of the same product! You keep treating it as if it were a brand new product! Why?!

[MSpagni]

Since a long time, I have EDP installed in "C:\Programs\ExamDiff Pro" and all the ugrades went there.
Did you use "Full upgrade"? Simply use "Custom upgrade or new installation".

[JeremyNicoll]

... it insists on installing new versions into a completely different named installation directory!

Why can't you stick with a plain generic name like "ExamDiff Pro" that never changes?

Not everyone wants new versions of <anything> to overwrite the old one. I certainly don't.

That breaks things on my system, and on a few other customers as well. Several of my existing products allow you to override (customize) their default settings for which comparison tool you want it to use...

IFF your products are versatile, they will do substitution of environment variables in the customisable command strings. Then all you need to do is put %fishy_compare_path% into all such strings, and set that externally, just once. I have a set of global "JN_"-prefix environment vars on my systems, more often used to cope with some machines having just one disk partition, others having several, and in rexx execs etc - especially those that call external utilities eg curl - use full explicit paths on every utility & data file they reference. It makes it MUCH easier to track down problems between different versions of utilities. In particular for curl, I'd much prefer not to use whatever possibly changing-without-me-knowing version it is that Microsoft supply.

I'm a software developer and I'm here to say it's not that hard to stick with the same installation directory! What's the deal? Why do you keep changing it with each new version? It's not a different product! It's just a different VERSION of the same product! You keep treating it as if it were a brand new product! Why?!

Don't you keep multiple versions of your own products on your systems for testing? Don't you think some of your customers would also do that?

[psguru]

It's because of v16's new color dialog is different, It's not the ordinary standard color dialog. It's some custom color dialog that only lets you set specific fixed colors. It doesn't let you set ANY color like v15 did. Yet another deal breaker for me.

You can actually edit colors in the new dialog any way you wish. Just press on the More Colors button. You even have a color picker now for your convenience:

Screenshot 2025-06-04 091541.png (66.92 KiB) Viewed 1996 times

[David B. Trout]

You can actually edit colors in the new dialog any way you wish. Just press on the More Colors button. You even have a color picker now for your convenience:

Have you actually TRIED setting any color you wish? No, you did not, because YOU CAN'T.

Unfortunately, your forum board software won't let me attach more than 3 images, so I can't inline all 10 images to illustrate (show) to you how your new dialog behaves when you try to do so, so I'll attach a small .zip file instead.

Images 1-3 in the attached .zip file shows you how v15 works. As you can see, the color for the "keyword" syntax item is set to RGB 0 0 255, with an HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminosity) value of 160, 240, 120.

Images 4-10 shows my attempt to set that same exact value in v16.

Each time you try to set one set of values, it changes the other set. You can't set BOTH sets (RGB and HSL) to the exact values you want.

And if you look at the new v16 dialog, it's obvious as to the reason why: it only supports a LIMITED set of colors to choose from. You can choose any of the colors OFFERED to you, but if you try setting an exact custom color that isn't in the limited set that it offers to you, IT DOESN'T LET YOU. Instead, it chooses one of its own colors that comes closest to the color you actually want. (That's just a guess).

But the point is, it DOESN'T allow you to set the EXACT specific color that you want.

I don't understand why the standard color dialog isn't being used. Why did you choose to use some weird, clearly inferior color dialog? What was it about the standard dialog that you didn't like that compelled you to replace it with the one you chose?

[psguru]

I don't see any attachments. What am I missing?

Version 15:

Screenshot 2025-06-04 161825.png (86.23 KiB) Viewed 1966 times

Version 16:

Screenshot 2025-06-04 161908.png (94.36 KiB) Viewed 1966 times

[David B. Trout]

I don't see any attachments. What am I missing?

I originally forgot to attach it, Sorry! It was your board software that originally rejected my attempt to attach the 10 images that screwed me up. I had to delete them all, and afterwards I forgot to attach the zip file. My bad.

I have since edited my original post and attached the zip file. Refresh my posting and the attachment should be there now. Sorry for the confusion.

[psguru]

So I see that you tried to select a completely custom color in the Custom tab. What happens when you press OK? For me, the selected color is shown as "Item text color".

[David B. Trout]

Sorry, but I don't understand your comment or your question.

I can only request that you try the following for yourself, so you can see first hand for yourself the incorrect behavior EDP v16 is presenting.

If you look at image #1 in my zip attachment, you can see that v15 only offers 6 syntax types: "keyword", "comment", "preprocessor", "number", "operator" and "string".

Images #2 and #3 show me attempting to customize the "keyword" syntax item in v15. (Note that I didn't actually want to change it. I only wanted to show you what the current v15 color was set to.)

Image #4 shows me selecting the "keyword" syntax item in the new v16 syntax colors dialog,

Image #5 shows the v16 "More Colors" dialog.

Image #6 shows the new v16 color settings dialog that appears when you click "More Colors", which has two tabs: "Standard" and "Custom".

Image #7 shows the new v16 "Custom" color dialog, where you can enter your custom HSL and RGB values.

Image #8 shows me setting the same HSL values as what v15 was set to. Notice that as I set them, EDP automatically changed the RGB values to the values you see: 7, 60, 232. Those values are NOT the same values as what v15 was set to.

So, I attempted to change the RGB values to 0, 0, 255: the same RGB values that v15 was set to (refer back to image #3)

Image #9 shows me setting the RGB values to the v15 settings: 0, 0, 255. But notice that as I did so, EDP then decided to automatically change my HSL values to 170, 255, 127! (WTF?!)

Image #10 shows what then appeared when I clicked the "Standard" tab of the new v16 color dialog. As you can see it chose one of its own LIMITED color choices, which while CLOSE to the color I wanted to set it too, is obviously NOT the EXACT color that v15 was using.

I don't know how to better illustrate the incorrect functioning of the new v16 color dialog. It's clearly "broken" IMHO since it does not allow you to set your own SPECIFIC (EXACT) custom color.

I don't give a rat's ass that colors EDP chooses for all of its newly supported syntax elements, but for the original "keyword", "comment", "preprocessor", "number", "operator" and "string" syntax elements, I want them to be set to the same values that v15 was using.

But unfortunately your new EDP v16 won't let me.

So no offense, but I'm sticking with v15 for now until you can get this bug fixed.

Thanks.

[MSpagni]

Each time you try to set one set of values, it changes the other set. You can't set BOTH sets (RGB and HSL) to the exact values you want.

Sorry, David, but I don't understand.
RGB and HSL are just two reference systems in the color space. Another is CMY.
If you specify a point in the color space using the RGB reference, then you already have set the coordinates also in the other(s). It's just a conversion of coordinates, like Cartesian vs polar, for example.
You have just three degrees of freedom, not six, hence you can't set both RGB and HSL. You must set RGB or HSL.

Windows works internally with RGB so, whatever reference you use, it will always be converted to RGB.
This has some consequences: you can have rounding errors switching from a reference to another and back.
Furthermore, if you set S and L to the maximum or minimum, H is completely ininfluent so, going back and forth, it can appear changed.

Then there's also another factor: the scale of the axis.
While the "Windows standard" for RGB is R = 0..255; G = 0..255; B = 0..255, things are more complicated with HSL.
It seems the standard Windows color dialog uses: H = 0..239; S = 0..240; L = 0..240 while EDP uses: H = 0..255; S = 0..255; L = 0..255.

In practice: if you want to transfer a color from Windows to EDP (or the other way round) use RGB.

[JeremyNicoll]

Like MSpagni, I'd always thought that RGB & HSL were just alternate ways of describing the same colour, & that a PC's hardware would use RGB to produce the colour you see. The only usefulness of HSL, it seems to me, is that fiddling with HSL values in pickers may make adjustment of a colour easier. Though nowadays when you can click on one of the 48 predefined colours or click on a pixel in the 'rainbow chart' to get an initial value it's much less difficult than just having 3 or 6 integers to play with.

I just experimented with the (OS-implemented, I presume - same as EDP v15) colour picker in IrfanView. If I pick the predefined dark blue that Fish likes (the deep blue sea?) it show up with both RGB & HSL integers set: RGB 0,0,255 HSL: 160,240,120. If I alter HSL's 160 to 161 & back to 160 the RGB numbers change to 6,0,255 & back to 0,0,255. Likewise if I change a RGB triple to something else & back, the HSL triple returns to the numbers it originally had. That is, RGB is not independent of HSL & vice versa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV has details of the mathematical conversion process used to convert between eg HSL & RGB. But not only is it possible that different pickers implement these conversions more or less well, there's another problem. Near the start of the wiki page is the text:

"HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness, and is often also called HLS. HSV stands for hue, saturation, and value, and is also often called HSB (B for brightness). A third model, common in computer vision applications, is HSI, for hue, saturation, and intensity. However, while typically consistent, these definitions are not standardized, and any of these abbreviations might be used for any of these three or several other related cylindrical models. (For technical definitions of these terms, see below.)"

Perhaps the two pickers are not both using HSL, or not both using HSV or not both using HSI?

Note that in the section on conversion algorithms there's sections on conversion between HSV & HSL.