A package for the Atom Editor that allows you to apply multiple syntax themes to your editing session at multiple levels, including by window, by pane, by file type, by file, and by editor.
fig. 1: Screenshot of an Atom editing session with multiple syntax themes.
The Atom editor only allows for a single monolithic theme to be applied across all your tabs, panes, and windows. This is a disappointing, and somewhat surprising fact of life in the Atom ecosystem given its excellent overall customization capabilities. Other editors such as emacs, have long allowed multiple themes to be applied at various levels of granularity (e.g. by window, by file, or file type).
Well no more.
Multi-theme-applicator, in the spirit of the emacs package color-theme-buffer-local , allows you to apply any installed syntax theme, at your chosen level of granularity, to the windows, panes, or editors in your editing session. With multi-theme-applicator, you now have this powerful capability available in Atom, making the best browser in its class that much better.
Experienced developers know that they can easily have dozens of separate files open over a long-lived editing session, with anywhere from 12 to 20 of those files being on the "active" workflow at any one time. Thus being able to visually categorize your work files is essential: decreasing the likelihood of "losing your place", and avoiding costly mistakes like editing the wrong file.
In other words, multi-theme-applicator, is a tool for increasing your workflow efficiency.
Allowing multiple coloring themes allows you to group files, and serves as a visual reminder for what "document-plex" you are currently in (for those who distribute their workload over multiple workspaces).
Additionally, since you don't have to commit to one all-encompassing theme, it allows you to experiment with many more of the outstanding themes available for Atom. So now it becomes no big deal to try out an "exotic" theme such as, say, fairyfloss, since you can restrict it to as small an "area" as a single file.
Allowing editor level theming is also useful when your global themes looks good on one file type, but not so good on others. Having this problem? Simply pick another theme that looks good on the other file type and your problem is solved. No more trying to find that one perfect theme that works across all your file types.
Requires Atom >=1.13.0. Tested on Atom 1.13.0 on Mac, Windows 10, and Linux Mint 18.
Install from the Atom control panel as you would for any standard Atom package.
fig. 2: Multi-Theme Applicator Getting Started video.
When you activate the multi-theme-applicator (MTA) panel with shift-ctrl-v (windows/linux) or shift-cmd-v (mac), you are presented with a list of the currently available themes. The panel and theme selection can be entirely controlled with home-row friendly key bindings or via mouse. Select the theme you want and click Apply Local Theme or press Enter. You will then see all the editors associated with the file of the active editor assume that theme. Having selected a new theme, the dialog will still remain active, allowing you to quickly iterate through and apply several themes until you find just the right one. When you're done, toggle the multi-theme-applicator to close by pressing the escape key, ctrl-shift-v, or clicking the "x" button, and resume working.
--> 2017-02-08: Note this describes how to use MTA v 0.9.0. This will be updated in the future to support MTA v1.1.0. In the meantime, please refer to the Introductory video and slide presentation in the Multimedia section above.
Note how two of the panes are open on one file and the third pane on another file and how relatively difficult it is to visually distinguish between them:
While either pane 1 or pane 2 is active, type shift-ctrl-v or shift-cmd-v (or activate the command palette and type 'multi') and activate the MTA modal panel. The modal dialog should come up with keyboard focus:
Note how the syntax theme selected item is a darker color and has a slightly larger border to denote its been selected.
Here we type 'h' to quickly locate the humane theme:
4) Hit Enter key, or press the Apply Local Theme button to activate the new theme.
Note 1: The theme was applied at the file level, not the editor level (new feature added in v 0.8.0). All three editors that are opened on file 'utils.cofee' will have the new theme, saving you the hassle of having to apply it three times. Of course, only two editors with the selected file are visible in this current example since the editor in pane 3 is in a tab that is not currently visible. However, if we do activate the file's tab in that pane, it will also have the new theme.
Note 2: Even after the theme is applied the dialog is still active, so you can scroll to another theme, hit Enter again, and apply that theme. This allows you to quickly decide if you like the theme or not, without having to go through the whole selection process again.
Note 3: Observe how much easier it is to distinguish between the files with multi-themes.
Note: with version 0.9.0, MTA remembers the theme applied to each file. See release notes below for more details.
Screenshot showing all three editors for the selected file sucessfully themed:
The following default key bindings are in effect:
shift-ctrl-v : Toggle MTA (mult-theme-applicator) (window/linux)
shift-cmd-v : Toggle MTA (mult-theme-applicator) (Mac)
shift-alt-v: Give MTA dialog keyboard focus (in editor context)
ctrl-n: scroll down through themes
ctrl-p: scroll up through themes
shift-alt-v: expand the theme list (in modal dialog context)
escape: close the MTA dialog (when it has keyboard focus)
You can also close the MTA dialog by clicking the "x" button.
Note 1: 'shift-alt-v' is used twice: once in the editor context, and the other in the modal dialog context.
Note 2: Quite frankly, some of these are kind of tricky key bindings. I have emacs and vim key bindings in effect on Atom, and finding free key bindings is difficult. If you don't have this problem, you can probably make better choices. See note 3 about how to do this.
Note 3: to change the keybindings, edit $HOME/.atom/packages/mult-theme-applicator/multi-theme-applicator.cson, or use the keybindings section of the Settings panel.
2018-02-26 - version 1.3.6
Minor Bug Fixes:
Form submission failed, as the <SELECT> element named 'selectTheme' was implicitly closed by reaching the end of the file. Please add an explicit end tag ('</SELECT>')
When applying a window level theme on Atom 1.25-beta2 X64.
2017-11-15 - version 1.3.2
Bug Fixes:
Note: if you want to restore Atom's default key binding for 'paste-without-reformatting' then edit file '~/.atom/packages/multi-theme-applicator/keymaps/multi-theme-applicator.cson' and delete or comment out the following lines:
"atom-workspace atom-text-editor":
"ctrl-shift-v" : "unset!"
"cmd-shift-v" : "unset!"
Of course, if you do this you will then lose the 'ctrl-shift-v' bindings for MTA. If you want to re-map MTA to a different sequence, edit all references to 'ctrl-shift-v' (Windows) or 'cmd-shift-v' (Mac) in the aforementioned 'multi-theme-applicator.cson' file, or simply edit under Atom via menu selection 'file->settings'.
2017-09-12 - version 1.3.0
Bix Fixes:
2017-07-21 - version 1.2.0
2017-04-25 - version 1.1.3
Bug Fix:
2017-04-19 - version 1.1.2
Minor bug fixes:
2017-02-08 - version 1.1.0
2017-02-02 - version 1.0.0
2016-09-03 - version 0.9.0
This release introduces quite a large amount of new functionality. Basically, local theming has been made much more "sticky", and requires less manual intervention and re-application. In short, it's starting to work a lot more like one "would expect", and fixes several edge cases where themes were previously not applied as expected.
2016-06-30 - version 0.8.0
2016-06-09 - version 0.7.0
2016-05-29 - version 0.6.1
Good catch. Let us know what about this package looks wrong to you, and we'll investigate right away.