Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / August 2005

I have always programmed in light text on a dark background.  I guess I
started on my Apple IIe 23 years ago and got formed a habit.  I like it.
Less overall brightness, less eyestrain, especially at night when the
screen is the only source of light in the room...that's my theory anyway.

I was disappointed when I recently switched to XCode to discover that on a
black background the cursor is virtually invsible.  I held out hope that a
newer version of XCode would fix this, but I installed 2.1 yesterday and
this problem persists.  The syntax coloring remains abysmal.  Functions
can't be colored uniquely, nor can class names, or globals or enums, etc.
I thought I had read somewhere that XCode was going to deliver major
improvements in 2.1 in this regard, that the XCode developers themselves
wanted to see this feature improved...but as far as I can tell the syntax
coloring is identical to v1.5.

My question is, if I read that the syntax coloring was going to improve in
2.1, where is it?  Am I missing it?  Is it somewhere else in the settings
or preferences that I'm not seeing?  That's what I want to know.

...and, does anyone else program on a black background, and if so, what do
you about the nearly-invisible cursor?  Is there some sort of hack that
will fix this?  Help is much appreciated.  Thank you.

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Keith Wiley         kwiley@cs.unm.edu         http://www.unm.edu/~keithw

"Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson,
that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to
aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy."
                                           --  Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland
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