The user can interrogate the current window to determine the color highlighting used on a particular piece of text. The following functions provide information on the highlighting pattern against which text at a particular position has been matched, its style, color and font attributes (whether the font is supposed to be bold and/or italic).

These macro functions permit macro writers to generate formatted output which allows NEdit-ng highlighting to be reproduced. This is suitable for the generation of HTML or Postscript output, for example.

Note that if any of the functions is used while in Plain mode or while syntax highlighting is off, the behaviour is undefined.

  • get_pattern_by_name( pattern_name )
    Returns an array containing the pattern attributes for pattern pattern_name. The elements in this array are:

    • style
      Highlight style name

    If pattern_name is invalid, an empty array is returned.

  • get_pattern_at_pos( pos )
    Returns an array containing the pattern attributes of the character at position pos. The elements in this array are:

    • pattern
      Highlight pattern name
    • style
      Highlight style name
    • extent
      The length in the text which uses the same highlighting pattern

    The extent value is measured from position pos going right/down (forward in the file) only.

    If pos is invalid, an empty array is returned.

  • get_style_by_name( style_name )
    Returns an array containing the style attributes for style style_name. The elements in this array are:

    • bold
      1 if style is bold, 0 otherwise
    • italic
      1 if style is italic, 0 otherwise
    • color
      Name of the style's color
    • background
      Name of the background color, if any

    The colors use the names specified in the color definitions for the style. These will either be names matching those the X server recognises, or RGB (red/green/blue) specifications.

    If style_name is invalid, an empty array is returned.

  • get_style_at_pos( pos )
    Returns an array containing the style attributes of the character at position pos. The elements in this array are:

    • style
      Name of the highlight style
    • bold
      1 if style is bold, 0 otherwise
    • italic
      1 if style is italic, 0 otherwise
    • color
      Name of the style's color
    • rgb
      Color's RGB values ('#rrggbb')
    • background
      Name of the background color, if any
    • back_rgb
      Background color's RGB values ('#rrggbb')
    • extent
      The length in the text which uses the same highlight style

    The colors use the names specified in the color definitions for the style. These will either be names matching those the display server recognises, or RGB specifications. The values for rgb and back_rgb contain the actual color values allocated by the display server for the window. If the display cannot match the specified (named) color exactly, the RGB values in these entries may not match the specified ones.

    The extent value is measured from position pos going right/down (forward in the file) only.

    If pos is invalid, an empty array is returned.