Semantic Coloring

Introduction

Semantic coloring is a technic which can highlight your commands in different colors according to the semantic meaning of command arguments.

Toggle

You can toggle the datapack.features.semanticColoring setting to enable/disable semantic coloring of DHP.

Also, if you're using VS Code, please make sure that the editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled setting is set to true if you want to experience this feature, otherwise the editor won't render these colors.

Technical Details

• LSP reference
• TextMate scope conventiion

Legend

Semantic Token Types

• annotation
• boolean
• comment
• entity
• keyword
• literal
• namespacedID
• number
• operator
• property
• string
• type
• variable
• vector

Semantic Token Modifiers

• declaration
• deprecated
• documentation
• firstArgument

Recommended Default Styles

Semantic Token Selector	TextMate Scope	Note
annotation	markup.heading.annotation.mcfunction	A doc comment annotation
boolean	constant.language.boolean.mcfunction	A boolean value
comment	N/A	-
entity	support.class.entity.mcfunction	An entity or a score holder
keyword	N/A	.. in number ranges and time units
literal	keyword.other.mcfunction	A literal argument
literal.firstArgument	keyword.control.mcfunction	A literal argument which is also the first argument
namespacedID	entity.name.function	A namespaced ID
number	N/A	-
operator	N/A	matches, =, /=, etc.
property	N/A	entity selector arguments keys, block property keys, NBT compound tag keys, and NBT path keys
string	N/A	-
type	N/A	Item slots, scoreboard slots, and objective criteria
variable	N/A	Objectives, teams, and tags
vector	constant.numeric.vector.mcfunction	A vector

• N/A means that this token is a built-in token in LSP and should have default styles already.

FAQ

Q: I'm using VS Code. Can I still install Arcensoth's language-mcfunction, another VS Code extension that provides syntax highlighting for mcfunctions?

Yes, and we encourage you to do so! Arcensoth's language-mcfunction extension. The language-mcfunction extension uses TextMate grammar that is based on regular expressions and computed on client side, while the language server's semantic coloring is based on semantic tokens and computed on server side. As a result, the process time of language-mcfunction is much shorter than the language server. By using both extensions, you can get immediate feedback from Arcensoth's extension while typing commands, which might be replaced with a more accurate color provided by the language server.

Also, there are some drawbacks of the semantic coloring provided by the language server, mostly by design:

• The language server doesn't provide coloring for text components, while Arcensoth's language-mcfunction does. This is because the server uses VS Code's vscode-json-languageservice package to provide completions and validations for text components, which doesn't support semantic coloring.
• The language server doesn't provide coloring for punctuations, like the brackets and commas in entity selectors, while Arcensoth's language-mcfunction does.

Q: I'm using VS Code. Can I customize the colors? They are ugly!

Yes, for sure! In fact the language server doesn't provide any actual colors; it only provides several semantic tokens that will be interpreted to different colors by your theme in VS Code.

You can see VS Code's documentation about how to change those colors. You can also check all the semantic token types and semantic token modifiers used by the language server on this page.

Q: Can I disable your semantic coloring?

Yes, by turning either editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled or datapack.features.semanticColoring off in your settings.

History

Version	Description
1.13.0	Implemented semantic coloring.
2.0.0	Added semantic coloring.