Sublime Forum

Difference between Theme and Color scheme in Sublime

#1

What is the difference between The Theme and Color scheme in Sublime?

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#2

A Color Scheme is stored in a sublime-color-scheme or tmTheme file, and provides the color rules for visual display of files. For example, what the foreground and background color should be, the color of selected text and so on. The rules it contains also provide instructions on what color to use for various file elements, like reserved words in programming languages, tag attributes in HTML, etc.

Color schemes are view-local; this means that you can use a global color scheme for every file, but override it on a file by file basis if you want. For example making files of one type use a different color scheme than another or making all of the files in one project use a different color scheme.

The extension tmTheme comes from TextMate (from which Sublime inherits various things) and is commonly causes confusion.

A Theme is stored in a sublime-theme file and styles the application as a whole. This controls things like what shape tabs are, how the side bar is presented, what the command palette looks like, and so on.

Unlike a color scheme, a theme is application global; only one can be applied at a time because it styles the whole application.

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#3

Very informative & enlightening. Thanks.

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#4

You seem quite knowledgeable. Any idea which theme is this → Which Theme

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#5

My best guess would be Material: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Material%20Theme

However I just use the Adaptive theme that ships with Sublime because I spend more time focused on the content of my files than the tabs used to represent them, so I haven’t played with many themes other than to help people troubleshoot problems with them.

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