ftp.nice.ch/Attic/openStep/developer/bundles/PBDHColor.0.09.README

This is the README for PBDHColor.0.09.s.tgz [Download] [Browse] [Up]

PBDHColor version 0.9
A silly hacque by b.bum <bbum@codefab.com>
http://www.codefab.com/codefab/Tools.html

· Why change the colors?

It just seems like a really bad idea that the background of the text should produce the
maximum amount of radiation from one's monitor.  White on Dark Blue is much easier on my eyes. 

It seems that this isn't just a figment of my warped imagination;  wasn't it WordPerfect or
WordStar that displayed white-on-blue text specifically so as to ease the overstrained eyes of
the typists/secrataries working in institutions with no natural light and lots of flourescent
light? 

· So what?  Why this stupid App?

Because NeXT forgot to allow one to change the highlight color used to display the line of
code one is currently editing.  The default is an obnoxiously bright yellow that renders white
text impossible to read! 

Fortunately, PB supports a dynamic loading interface for customizing the app.  Simply write a
bundle, write a default, and it loads the next time PB is launched. 

Unfortunately, the default is not documented and requires one to write a property list
formatted array of absolute paths.  Yuck!  Of course, since I wrote this app, a new version of
4.2 was released and PB now has a preferences UI to support this feature . 

SO-- the first feature of this app is to provides a user interface for managing all of the
bundles that will be dynamically loaded into PB. 

As well, within the App Wrapper one will find a bundle that can be added to the load path. 
Once added, it reads a user default to determine what color to display as the debugging
highlight. 

The App's second purpose is to provide a User Interface for changing that default.

***disclaimer *** Of course, this change to Project uses totally undocumented internal API,
modifies the Objective-C runtime directly, and-- as such-- is extremely dangerous and may
cause ProjectBuilder to destroy, corrupt, or otherwise diddle your code and data.  If anything
bad happens as a result of the use of this application or as a result of ProjectBuilder
dynamically loading the bundle found within this application, neither I (bbum) nor CodeFab can
take any responsibility for whatever happened. If something bad DOES happen, please let me
(bbum) know and I'll do my best to fix the problem so the same thing doesn't happen to me. 

You will know that the PBDHColor.bundle has been successfully loaded into ProjectBuilder when
you see the following message on the console 

'Jul 14 17:55:24 ProjectBuilder[1901] PSDebuggingHighlightColor Bundle installed. Caveat
Emptor.'

enjoy,
b.bum

These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.