Using Fonts and Colors

The Visual Studio SDK provides support for using fonts and colors to display text.

In This Section

Font and Color Overview
Discusses text font and color settings in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Also introduces the concepts of Categories and Display Items, and describes how VSPackages and the core editor use text attributes.

Getting Font and Color Information for Text Colorization
Provides guidelines for implementing text colorization in VSPackages that manage Categories other than Text Editor.

Accessing Stored Font and Color Settings
Explains how current font and color settings can be stored, retrieved, and applied.

Implementing Custom Categories and Display Items
Describes the basic steps by which a window can create and use its own of Display Items and Categories to support text display.

This approach requires a VSPackage to implement the IVsFontAndColorDefaultsProvider interface and related interfaces.

How to: Access the Built-in Fonts and Color Scheme
Discusses how to define and register a category by using built-in fonts and colors, and initiate the use of system-provided fonts and colors.

Reference

IVsFontAndColorDefaultsProvider
Provides an instance of the IVsFontAndColorDefaults or the IVsFontAndColorGroup interface that corresponds to a particular item listed in the Show Settings For list in the Fonts and Colors page of the Options dialog box.

IVsFontAndColorDefaults
Enables a VSPackage to support the IDE Fonts and Colors page by defining default fonts and colors for a window or UI component.

IVsFontAndColorGroup
Provides a mechanism by which a VSPackage that provides font and color support can specify a Display Item group - a super-category that represents the union of two or more categories.

IVsFontAndColorStorage
Enables a VSPackage to retrieve font and color data, or save it to the registry.

IVsFontAndColorEvents
Notifies VSPackages that are using font and color information about changes in font and color settings.

IVsFontAndColorUtilities
Provides tools for working with the input and output data that is used by the methods of the Visual Studio Font and Color mechanism.

IVsFontAndColorCacheManager
Controls the caching of font and color settings.

Related Sections

Developing a Legacy Language Service
Discusses how VSPackages can use language services to customize the Visual Studio editor.

Syntax Coloring in Custom Editors
Descries how the Visual Studio editor uses language services to implement syntax coloring.

Extending Other Parts of Visual Studio
Explains how to use Visual Studio services to create UI elements that match the rest of Visual Studio.