doc: common: skins

Color schemes

Midnight Commander supports color schemes. This allows to change the look of all elements of the program interface. If you not need for colors, you may run Midnight Commander with -b or --nocolor option.

Colors in Midnight Commander

Color of any interface element described by color pair:

Color for text and background	Colors just for text
black	gray
red	brightred
green	brightgreen
brown	yellow
blue	brightblue
magenta	brightmagenta
cyan	brightcyan
lightgray	white

Definition of color scheme

Default color scheme now hardcoded and noo able to change without recompile of project. At start of program first initialized default color scheme. Then analyzes the user-defined color schemes. User has four opportunities to redefine the colors of interface elements Midnight Commander:

• in section [Colors] in ~/.mc/ini configuration file;
• in section describing the terminal in ~/.mc/ini configuration file.You can define your color scheme for each type of terminal;
• in environment variable MC_COLOR_TABLE;
• through the command-line -C option (or --colors option).

Each of these settings supplements or replace previous settings

Default color scheme

Parameter	Value	Description
normal	lightgray,blue	Main color
reverse	black,lightgray	Inverse color
gauge	white,black	Progressbar indicator
input	black,cyan	Input string
selected	black,cyan	Panel: current file
marked	yellow,blue	Panel: marked file
markselect	yellow,cyan	Panel: current marked file
directory	white,blue	Panel: directory
executable	brightgreen,blue	Panet: executable file
link	lightgray,blue	Panel: symlink
stalelink	brightred,blue	Panel: stale symlink
device	brightmagenta,blue	Panel: file of device
core	red,blue	Panel: core-file
special	black,blue	Panel: special file
dnormal	black,lightgray	Dialog window: main color
dfocus	black,cyan	Dialog window: color of focused element
dhotnormal	blue,lightgray	Dialog window: Color of character for hotkey
dhotfocus	blue,cyan	Dialog window: Color of character for hotkey in focused element
errors	white,red	Error message: main color
errdhotnormal	yellow,red	Error message: Color of character for hotkey
errdhotfocus	yellow,lightgray	Error message: Color of character for hotkey in focused element
menu	white,cyan	Menu: main color
menusel	white,black	Menu: selected item
menuhot	yellow,cyan	Menu: Color of character for hotkey
menuhotsel	yellow,black	Menu: Color of character for hotkey in selected item
helpnormal	black,lightgray	Help: main color
helpitalic	red,lightgray	Help: italic text
helpbold	blue,lightgray	Help: bold text
helplink	black,cyan	Help: unselected text link
helpslink	yellow,blue	Help: selected text link
viewunderline	brightred,blue	Viewer and editor: underlined text
editnormal	lightgray,blue	Editor: main color
editbold	yellow,blue	Editor: color of highlighted search results
editmarked	black,cyan	Editor: marked text
editwhitespace	brightblue,blue	Editor: tabs and trailing spaces
editlinestate	white,cyan	Editor: color of status field for lines

Description of format user-defined color scheme

Use short help by calling:

$ mc --help-color

Appearance customization file (skin file) format description

Loading a skin file

A skin file can be specified in the following ways (in descending order of priority):

• command line parameter -S <skin> or --skin=<skin>
• environment variable MC_SKIN
• skin parameter in the configuration file in the [Midhight Commander] section
• file ${sysconfdir}/mc/skins/default.ini (e.g. /etc/mc/skins/default.ini)
• file ${datadir}/mc/skins/default.ini (e.g. /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini).

Parameters in the first three cases may contain an absolute path to the skin file or just the name of the skin (with or without .ini extension). In this case, the skin file will be searched in the following directories (until the first one is found):

• /.mc/skins/
• /etc/mc/skins/
• /usr/share/mc/skins/

Section descriptions

[skin]

Contains information related to the skin file itself.

• description
  • briefly describes the skin.

[filehighlight]

contains descriptions of color pairs for file name highlighting groups. The names of the parameters in the section must match the names of sections in the highlighting file.

[core]

contains a description of elements used universally.

• _default_
  • Default color. Used in all other sections (global parameter) unless overridden in them

• selected
  • cursor

• marked
  • marked data

• markselect
  • cursor on marked data

• gauge
  • color of the filled part of the bar (progress bar)

• input
  • data input element

• reverse
  • inverted color

[dialog]

contains descriptions of dialog elements (except for error messages).

• _default_
  • The default color for this section. If not specified, [core]._default_ is used.

• dfocus
  • The color of the element that is in focus

• dhotnormal
  • The color of the hotkeys

• dhotfocus
  • The color of the hotkeys in focus

[error]

contains descriptions of the elements of the error dialog.

• _default_ The default color for this section. If not specified, [core]._default_ is used.

• errdhotnormal
  • The color of the hotkeys

• errdhotfocus
  • The color of the hotkeys that are in focus

[menu]

contains a description of the items displayed in the menu. This applies to both the system menu (invoked by the F9 key) and custom menus (F2 in panels or F11 in the editor).

• _default_ The default color for this section. If not specified, [core]._default_ is used.

• entry
  • The color of the menu items

• menuhot
  • The color of the hotkeys

• menusel
  • Color of the highlighted menu item

• menuhotsel
  • Color of hotkeys in focus

[help]

Contains color descriptions for the help display window.

• _default_
  • The default color for this section. If not specified, [core]._default_ is used.

• helpitalic
  • Colors elements with the italic attribute

• helpbold
  • Colorization of elements with the bold attribute

• helplink
  • Links color

• helpslink
  • Color of the link below the cursor

[editor]

contains descriptions of editor elements

• _default_
  • Default color for this section. If not specified, [core]._default_ is used.

• editbold
  • Colors elements with the bold attribute.

• editmarked
  • Color of selected text

• editwhitespace
  • Highlighting of tabs and dangling spaces

• linestate
  • Color of the line state display area.

[viewer]

contains descriptions of editor elements

• viewunderline
  • Colorization of elements with the underline attribute

Lines for drawing frames

Lines are defined in the [Lines] section of the skin file. Single lines are used by default, but can be reassigned to use any utf-8 characters similar to lines

Parameters description of [Lines] section:

• lefttop
  • image of the upper left corner of the frame

• righttop
  • image of the upper right corner of the frame

• centertop
  • downward branch of the horizontal line

• centerbottom
  • horizontal line branch up

• leftbottom
  • bottom left corner of the frame

• rightbottom
  • bottom right corner of the frame

• leftmiddle
  • vertical line branch to the right

• rightmiddle
  • vertical line branch to the left

• centermiddle
  • image of the intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines

• horiz
  • horizontal line

• vert
  • vertical line image

• thinhoriz
  • thin horizontal line image

• thinvert
  • thin vertical line