TextMate theme for RadRails

Posted by Dr Nic on August 08, 2006 and blessed with 73 comments

Radrails with Textmate themeUPDATE: Screen shot of Textmate theme for Radrails now available.

UPDATE: Vista ClearType fonts available now. I’ve also added instructions for changing fonts in RadRails if you cannot install Consolas, below.

RadRails comes with one theme: white background, black foreground. A few nice shades of markup. Lovely.

Want a little more excitement? Perhaps you want to feel like your using TextMate, even though it costs 30€ and won’t run on your machine anyway?

What you need is the TextMate-theme for RadRails. My friend Brett devised this and gave it to me during Railsconf. Understand this with me – he drove 15 hours from southern USA to Chicago. I flew 20 hours from Amsterdam. Just so I could get this theme and now share it with you.

That’s one prized theme right there, all y’alls. (A Texan taught me that once).

Download it, unzip it, and store it anywhere you like. Don’t like free choice? Then save it in the RadRails/Themes.

If my memory serves me well:

  1. Go to File > Import…
  2. Under General, select Preferences, and click Next.
  3. Browse to the epf file.
  4. Select the Import All checkbox and press Finish.

You are now one sexy Ruby/Rails developer. Yes, you.

UPDATE: The theme will look for the Consolas font – one of the new Windows Vista fonts that you can download after a bit of Googling – its the replacement for Courier New.

UPDATE: If you cannot install Consolas on your system, you will need to select an alternate fixed width font, such as Courier. To do this:

  1. Go to Window >> Preferences…
  2. Go to General >> Appearance >> Colors and Fonts
  3. Select Basic >> Text Font
  4. Click Change…
  5. Select your replacement fixed width font, and press Ok.

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  1. Brett Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:48:49 UTC

    Instructions are spot-on! The blog looks great, and thanks for the mention :)

  2. Enrico Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:19:44 UTC

    Hi Dr. Nic,

    *please* help me remove those preferences!

    I wanna go back to the original theme.

    I tried deleting the radrails folder and reinstalling, but with no luck

    THANKS

  3. choonkeat Tue, 08 Aug 2006 05:27:26 UTC

    Thanks for sharing! I flew 22 hrs from Singapore to see your demo!

    I’ve changed my font back to monospace (i’m that kind of guy) and everything feels more comfy already

  4. Dr Nic Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:10:06 UTC

    Oh that reminds me – you need to install the new Windows Vista fonts. Specifically its looking for the Consolas font – a monospaced replacement for Courier New.

  5. [db75] » Blog Archive » TextMate for RadRails Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:59:01 UTC

    [...] At some point in the near future I plan on running TextMate on my Mac, but in the meantime Dr. Nic has posted a great TextMate theme for RadRails. I installed it this evening and really love the code coloring on the black background. It’s much easier on my eyes and I’m looking forward to a boost in productivity! [...]

  6. Jim Greer Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:27:49 UTC

    If a Texan taught you Y’alls, it only goes to show that Texas really isn’t a part of the Southern US. Y’all is _always_ plural. Drop the final ’s’ and sin no more.

    Thanks for the TextMate theme news/link. I’ll check it out.

  7. Dr Nic Sat, 12 Aug 2006 23:04:24 UTC

    Damn… there is official syntax for a phrase “used only in informal situations” :)

    Wikipedia

    Y’all is typically used only in informal situations, and is frowned upon in (and even excluded from) formal speech and writing. It is sometimes used as a dual pronoun to refer to only two people, with a related form “all y’all” used for plural contexts. The possessive form of y’all is y’all’s (e.g. “I really like y’all’s house.”), and the possessive form of all y’all is all y’all’s. While y’all has begun to spread to general US English, all y’all and y’all’s have not; y’all and your are used, respectively.

  8. Dr Nic Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:26:30 UTC

    I’ve uploaded the ClearType fonts for Vista to this article, as you need the Consolas font.

  9. Aaron Broad Sun, 20 Aug 2006 05:54:43 UTC

    Hi Dr. Nic,

    What is the proper way to install the vista fonts? I’m in ubuntu dapper. I just unzipped it in /usr/share/fonts/ttf/ but i’m not sure if its getting picked up.

    Thanks

  10. Dr Nic Sun, 20 Aug 2006 06:56:54 UTC

    @aaron – I’m a PC chump, so I’ve got the same chance of finding the answer on google you do, but I’ll update the article with how to setup a different fixed-width font if you cannot install the fonts happily.

  11. Aaron Broad Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:10:46 UTC

    Hi,

    Well it seems to look fine. I can only assume they are getting picked up. I just want to make sure i’m getting all the goodness possible:P

    Thanks

  12. Dr Nic Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:17:40 UTC

    Hmm, to check that RadRails is picking up the font, go through the steps to set a new font, and check that Consolas font is in the list. If so, all things should be joyful.

    Cheers

  13. Thomas Lockney Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:44:03 UTC

    Could we get some screenshots perhaps?

  14. Dr Nic Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:00:42 UTC

    @Thomas – good idea – screenshot now added.
    Cheers
    Nic

  15. Thomas Lockney Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:07:00 UTC

    Also, for those of you on linux (well, at least one Ubuntu, I suspect it will run on other distros, too), here’s how to load the fonts:

    1. Download the font zip to a temporary directory and unzip it.
    2. Create a .fonts directory in your home directory if it doesn’t already exist.
    3. Move each of the directories into your .fonts directory
    4. Run fc-cache from a terminal (you do not need to be root to do this — this only changes the fonts loaded for your current login account)

  16. Developing Ruby on Windows or The Search for the holy Textmate Mon, 28 Aug 2006 08:29:48 UTC

    [...] Damit ich nicht auf Textmate-Feeling verzichten muss, hat sich ein Kollege von Dr. Nic die Mühe gemacht ein Textmate-Theme für Radrails zu erstellen bzw. der Artikel dazu [...]

  17. Brian Doherty Sat, 02 Sep 2006 03:35:06 UTC

    Love the textmate theme for radrails, black background reminds me of the ol’ VT100 green-on-black or orange-on-black days!

    One issue: files with an sql extension are pretty much unreadable. I figured I’d go in and tweak it myself, but I couldn’t find where! The preferences General -> Editors -> File associations says “*.sql” uses “SQL Editor”. I didn’t see where to modify the “SQL Editor” settings, though. Any ideas?

  18. jp_n9 Mon, 04 Sep 2006 18:44:17 UTC

    Good contribution. I had written the RadRails guys and mentioned that if they themed the window to look like the RoR Screencasts they would probably see more adoption. Pretty superficial – but that’s life. Personally, I find it easier on my eyes.

  19. Eric Will Code For Coffee » Blog Archive » Is your IDE Hot or Not? Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:15:15 UTC

    [...] There aren’t very many good colour schemes on there yet. Seems like everyone has a black background instead of the standard white background. I made my theme based on the Textmate Theme for RadRails, adapted for the Visual Studio IDE. Consolas is a really great font! [...]

  20. de tomKronieken » links for 2006-10-02 Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:47:29 UTC

    [...] Dr Nic on Ruby on Rails » TextMate theme for RadRails TextMate theme for RadRails (tags: rails eclipse) [...]

  21. Paul Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:58:55 UTC

    Ugh Cleartype is so repulsive, can’t believe someone could look at that all day. I had to use Windows for a bit and Cleartype would give me headaches, not to mention make fonts look rubbish and colours inaccurate.
    Give me Monaco 9pt aliased any day.

  22. Dr Nic » Make RadRails look like TextMate Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:33:29 UTC

    [...] One my very early posts (3 months ago) might be useful to RadRailers if you haven’t already seen it: how to make RadRails text editors look like TextMate. [...]

  23. FireRaven Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:25:55 UTC

    Looks great. except for the Tab labels. They are Black (not legible against burgundy) instead of white. Any ideas/suggestions on how to fix this? I could not find a specific setting in the preferences for this.
    Thanks.

  24. ArthurGeek Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:05:41 UTC

    Yeah…
    The only minor problem is those tab labels in black…

  25. Dr Nic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:09:44 UTC

    @arthur – FireRaven/Martin emailed me later with:

    Preferences > General > Appearance > Color and Fonts > Active part foreground (color)

    Does this allow you to fix the black tabs?

    Sorry for not posting this earlier – forgot it was in email, and not here.

  26. Alex Wayne Thu, 16 Nov 2006 22:01:44 UTC

    Awesome. The default RadRails color scheme never sat right with me. Just felt ugly.

    There was one thing I had to change though. Regular expressions were colored pure blue, which was almost invisible against the black background. Changed it to a lavender and all seems well.

  27. KoSI Knowledge Blog » Archiv » jEdit Mac-Style Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:30:35 UTC

    [...] Auch für RadRails gibt es ein Skin, das es wie TextMate aussehen lässt. Außerdem soll RadRails ab der nächsten Version (0.7.2) alle Textmate-Abbrevs beherrschen. Wer nicht warten kann, Dr Nic stellt sie jetzt schon zum Download bereit. [...]

  28. André Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:51:26 UTC

    Hi there,
    can you help me to uninstall this feature? I didn´t like the result and it changed all my eclipse. Thank you a lot.

  29. James Geurts' Blog Sun, 10 Dec 2006 23:07:03 UTC

    Textmate theme for RadRails…

    I was recently visiting with my friend Jayme and among other things, he told me about a theme that’s…

  30. Neil Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:07:59 UTC

    Brian Doherty said: “One issue: files with an sql extension are pretty much unreadable. I figured I’d go in and tweak it myself, but I couldn’t find where! The preferences General -> Editors -> File associations says “*.sql” uses “SQL Editor”. I didn’t see where to modify the “SQL Editor” settings, though. Any ideas?”

    Yes, this is a problem… Much of the SQL identifiers are in white, and the background colour is white. You can find the (limited) options for SQL Editor in Windows > Preferences… > Data > SQL Editor. But none of the settings show white text on white background. Anyone know how to get SQL to be readable with these preferences?

  31. Shoob » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-15 Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:30:28 UTC

    [...] RubyOnRails : Dr Nic » TextMate theme for RadRails Pour ceux qui travaillent avec les deux éditeurs, voici un petit thème pour customiser RadRails … pour ressembler un peu à TextMate. (tags: eclipse editor programming radrails textmate) [...]

  32. Elia Schito Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:13:31 UTC

    “Bitstream Vera Sans Mono” seems to be a good alternative to consolas, it’s even less similar to that typewriter-eye-killer-style of courier than consolas
    (btw I’m not sure that it’s installed on all systems).

    …those red/lack tabs are pretty ugly

  33. t3hslr Sun, 28 Jan 2007 06:20:11 UTC

    Is there any way to change that white collapse line between the line numbers and the text-entry field?

    It’s driving me nuts.

    – t3hslr

  34. Daniel Balieiro » TextMate no RadRails =) Mon, 05 Feb 2007 03:38:18 UTC

    [...] Se você é mais um fan desse maravilhoso editor, o TextMate, mas não tem um Apple, já deve ter ouvido falar do template do Dr Nic para RadRails. [...]

  35. Textmate for Linux Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:02:02 UTC

    [...] At the begging I’ve used RadRails. It was quite nice, but first I had some problems running it on amd64 (you need to pay attention to java version – 32 bit). Now I have ubuntu 32bit, so then some new problems showed up. First of all I needed some other plugins, like for html, css and so on. So I started to use EasyEclipse LAMP which has everything that I need. But finally I thought it’s to big for me. I’ve used snippets from here and theme form here [...]

  36. Eric Baker Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:10:10 UTC

    I agree with t3hslr. Any way to change that color to black? It’s a small thing, but it’s driving me crazy.

    Help! =)

  37. Eric Baker Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:14:24 UTC

    Also, agree with Paul. What lunatic at Microsoft (is that redundant?) thought that ClearType looks good? I had to turn it off immediately. They should rename it FuzzyType.

    My favorite font for programming is still Andale Mono.

    Cheers!

  38. Ben Kittrell Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:42:18 UTC

    Thanks again Dr. Nic.

    I think Lucinda Console looks pretty sweet with this theme.

  39. Soleone Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:10:58 UTC

    @Eric Baker & t3hslr
    You can go to Preferences -> Ruby -> Editor -> Folding
    and remove the checkbox at “Enable folding when opening a new editor”.

    This completely removes the white folding column.

  40. samir on rails » Blog Archive » RadRails con tema de TextMate Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:41:14 UTC

    [...] Revisando como optimizar mejor el IDE para desarrollo de RoR me encontré con un árticulo que hace referencia a como instalar el tema de TextMate en RadRails. Lo probé y anda bastante bien. [...]

  41. onLINE » Blog Archive » RadRails goes TextMate Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:50:13 UTC

    [...] My current editor of choice is RadRails (since it works pretty well in Linux and due to my Java-background in Eclipse), despite the slightly outdated version (last update in December, but I’m hoping, the new maintainers at Aptana will soon do something about that …). I googled a little bit and found that Dr Nic has already released both a TextMate theme and TextMate-like code templates for RadRails. Both seem to work pretty well. To finally make it look even more like TextMate, just download the font Monaco, go to “Window – Preferences – General – Appearance – Colors and Fonts” and set the Text Font to Monaco. [...]

  42. ylon Tue, 08 May 2007 02:12:20 UTC

    Does anyone know of how to get the folding code line to have a black bg and what widgets to tweak to make the activation widgets look proper with a black bg?

    Also, anyone familiar with ways to tweak the rest of the interface so that we can have an all encompassing dark theme throughout Eclipse?

  43. Romiro » Blog Archive » Ruby Blue theme for Eclipse Sat, 19 May 2007 17:14:03 UTC

    [...] After my switch I found out that it’s either really difficult to do Google searches on Eclipse themes and styles, or that no one has really made much headway in that part of the IDE. (There is the TextMate theme for RadRails but I found it to be not exactly my cup of tea…I’m picky, sorry!). So I tasked myself with an attempt at manually migrating the pretty colors from ZDE into Eclipse, and wouldn’t you know it, the transition went pretty damn smoothly. [...]

  44. Conrad Taylor Mon, 21 May 2007 11:19:47 UTC

    Hey Dr. Nic, I was wondering, where I can locate the textmate theme you’re using for RadRails because I would like to add it to textmate?

    Thanks in advance,

    -Conrad

  45. Dr Nic Mon, 21 May 2007 19:12:00 UTC

    @conrad – you want to take a radrails theme that’s based on textmate and port it back to textmate? :)

    The link is in the text above or here

  46. Conrad Thu, 24 May 2007 00:43:54 UTC

    Hey Dr. Nic, thanks for getting back to me. I wasn’t able to find the them in Textmate that matched the RadRails Textmate theme. BTW, what’s the name of the Textmate them that RadRails is using? The closest on my system was the following:

    All Hallow’s Eve
    Sunburst

    -Conrad

  47. uninstall Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:43:07 UTC

    how to uninstall it,
    help me!~

  48. Jak zrobić Textmate z RadRails at Łukasz Schabowski // Weblog Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:21:59 UTC

    [...] Dr Nic » TextMate theme for RadRails [...]

  49. uninstall Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:16:39 UTC

    To go back to the defaults, do File > Switch Workspace and it will go back to normal. Hope this helps! I figured this out by accident.

  50. uninstall Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:17:49 UTC

    Forgot to mention that you need to make a new workspace folder.

  51. sidewinder128 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:20:20 UTC

    Anyway why bother with a stupid theme text colors. The important is to code good solutions not to see how beautiful my text editor looks LMAO. Actually that color theme remember me the times of Turbo C on DOS ROFLAO.

  52. Jacques Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:03:53 UTC

    Be forewarned that rolling back to your previous default color theme is a bitch. :)

  53. burlight Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:22:33 UTC

    oh, god this is cool! Thanks a lot!

  54. EatenByGrues Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:06:45 UTC

    It looks great for Ruby, but rhtml and sql are pretty much unreadable with this theme.

  55. Anton Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:40:39 UTC

    Looks like with the recent update to radrails plugin, ERB and RHTML no longer work well with this package. I am having trouble figuring out how to change the foreground color in rhtml :(

  56. Anton Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:46:52 UTC

    aha, to change color of regular html text in RHTML file, you need to change the color of “text” in the HTML editor color settings.
    Weird :)

  57. Kamil Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:23:20 UTC

    Anton, Thank you so much for finding this! I’ve almost gone blind because of having black on black rhtml :D THANKS!

  58. Rich Fri, 19 Oct 2007 03:15:04 UTC

    Anyone know how to fix the unreadable red “tabs”?

  59. rucy Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:34:35 UTC

    How To go back to the defaults, not change workspace…
    Please…

  60. xain Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:29:16 UTC

    Some asked a way to remove the effect. May be the author should ask readers backup the preference first before change it. To backup, Will exporting the preference work?

  61. xain Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:36:41 UTC

    To fix the tab color:
    Preferences/General/Appearance/Colors and Fonts
    under
    View and Editor Folders
    you will find “Active part background begin” and “Active part background end”, set these two to white color.

  62. Bert Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:06:21 UTC

    Thanks for the great look!!!

  63. limeyd Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:36:02 UTC

    Stop trying to be something you’re not either go buy a mac and textmate or deal with the radrails theme.

  64. limeyd Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:39:02 UTC

    p.s. I love your tagline but really rails makes magic and us rails developers just put the show on the stage.

  65. » RadRails like Textmate Ruby on Praxis: Ruby im Praxissemester Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:25:43 UTC

    [...] hab ich gefunden bei Dr Nic und die Templates bei [...]

  66. TextMate theme for RadRails at brant interactive Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:59:22 UTC

    [...] the Eclipse plug-in for Rails development, and want to get that super cool look textmate offers, you have to check out this post. The color scheme combined with the new fonts that ship with Vista make this a nice switch from the [...]

  67. WeOnRails! » Arquivo » Tema TextMate para RadRails Tue, 27 May 2008 04:39:23 UTC

    [...] caso do RadRails, você pode visitar este post que mostra como aplicar o [...]

  68. Diigo Diary 05/28/2008 « Benx Blog Wed, 28 May 2008 10:42:04 UTC

    [...] Dr Nic » TextMate theme for RadRails [...]

  69. vijay Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:41:17 UTC

    This doesn’t work with the New Aptana RadRails 1.0 release.
    Go to
    http://forums.aptana.com/viewtopic.php?t=2214&highlight=theme+textmate
    to find one compatible with that

  70. Dzsó Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:44:42 UTC

    Really Thanks!!!

  71. joe Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:58:23 UTC

    This is a really great them. However, it seems to have changed the color scheme for Java development as well. I’m using eclipse 3.4. Any thoughts on how to get my original java code color them back?

  72. Mark Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:17:54 UTC

    It seems that this didn’t change the background of the actual editor, just the background of the text. Any ideas how I can get the editor bg to be black also? I’m on XP not Vista.

  73. ondro Tue, 12 May 2009 03:49:15 UTC

    please, how to use previous – default theme. thanks

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