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How do I change the Console colour of Arduino IDE?

Leading on from the question Can I change font Color and/or Type for IDE 1.5.6r2?, in 1.6.0, or 1.6.1¹ it does not seem to be possible to change console.color or console.error.color. To be precise, you can change the settings in the preferences.txt² file, but they appear to be ignored when the IDE is restarted. Have these become hard coded? I see from the preference.txt example file that

# Some colors have been hardcoded into the source in app/ in order to ensure
# consistency with the images distributed and stored with the application.
# They have been commented out below so that users who install an old
# version of the software will not get incorrect colors left-over from this
# config file.

However, the settings to which I refer are not commented out, and so would led me to believe that they can be changed. Orange text on black is just horrific to read.

For example:

console.error.color=#FFF000
console.color=#FFCCCC

but I still get white/orange(red?) text for the output and error messages respectively.

I am making the edits while the Arduino IDE is not running.

¹ In 1.6.3 the ignored console.color etc. lines appear to have been removed from the preferences.txt file.

² C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Arduino15\preferences.txt

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Thanks for that. BTW, the Windows path is C:\Program Files\Arduino\lib\theme\theme.txt. It does beg the question why are the console.error and console.color lines in the preferences.txt file if they are ignored. The Arduino IDE truly is a shockingly terrible piece of software. However, having said that, I notice that in version 1.6.3 the lines appear to have been removed.

Greenonline
– Greenonline

2015年04月10日 16:25:52 +00:00
Commented Apr 10, 2015 at 16:25
If you've put those lines in preferences.txt (as I did), then they'll still be there after the IDE has read and re-dumped the properties, even though the IDE ignores them. Myself, I don't much like the IDE editor, so I use an external editor (setting the appropriate preference), and just use the IDE to compile and upload – for that, for me, it works well enough. Anyone out there who can add the path to the theme file under Linux?

Norman Gray
– Norman Gray

2015年04月10日 18:41:22 +00:00
Commented Apr 10, 2015 at 18:41
I've added the Windows and Linux paths to your answer. Hope you don't mind.

Greenonline
– Greenonline

2015年04月11日 11:09:53 +00:00
Commented Apr 11, 2015 at 11:09
@Greenonline Looks great!

Norman Gray
– Norman Gray

2015年04月11日 20:49:07 +00:00
Commented Apr 11, 2015 at 20:49

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