Calva Highlight#

Calva takes care of syntax highlighting, and also provides some features not available through VS Code's highlighting mechanism. These extras include rainbow parens, sane bracket matching, and comment form dimming/highlighting.

Syntax Highlighting#

When using Calva, you are also using its TMLanguage grammar (the core mechanism VS Code uses for syntax highlighting).

Keywords#

Our grammar tokenizes a Clojure keyword in parts. For :foo/bar:

Part	Scope
The whole keyword, and the colons	`constant.keyword.clojure`
The namespace, `foo`	`entity.name.type.keyword.namespace.clojure`
The slash	`variable.other.event.keyword.separator.clojure`
The name, `bar`	`keyword.control.keyword.name.clojure`

These are the scopes VS Code colors clojure-lsp's semantic tokens for keywords with. So keywords look the same in files that get semantic tokens from clojure-lsp, and in files that don't, like files outside your source paths, or files opened before clojure-lsp has started.

With semantic highlighting on, the color of a keyword in a file comes from clojure-lsp's keyword semantic token, which a TextMate rule doesn't reach. To give keywords a color of your own, set it for both the semantic token and the grammar's scopes:

"editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
    "[Default Dark+]": {
        "rules": {
            "keyword:clojure": "#6fbfff"
        }
    }
},
"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "[Default Dark+]": {
        "textMateRules": [
            {
                "scope": [
                    "constant.keyword.clojure",
                    "keyword.control.keyword.name.clojure"
                ],
                "settings": {
                    "foreground": "#6fbfff"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
},

Instead of Default Dark+ you should use your theme's name/key. And choose a color you like, of course.

Extra Highlighting#

You are in charge of how brackets and comments are highlighted via the calva.highlight.<setting> settings:

Setting	Meaning	Example
`enableBracketColors`	Enable rainbow colors	`true`
`rainbowIndentGuides`	Enable rainbow indent guides	`true`
`highlightActiveIndent`	Highlight the active indent guide	`true`
`bracketColors`	Which colors to use	`["#000", "#999"]`
`cycleBracketColors`	Whether same colors should be reused for deeply nested brackets	`true`
`misplacedBracketStyle`	Style of misplaced bracket	`{ "border": "2px solid #c33" }`
`matchedBracketStyle`	Style of bracket pair highlight	`{"backgroundColor": "#E0E0E0"}`
`ignoredFormStyle`	Style of `#_...` forms	`{"textDecoration": "none; opacity: 0.5"}`
`ignoredTopLevelFormStyle`	Style of `#_...` forms at the top level. (If not set, uses `ignoredFormStyle`)	`{ "textDecoration": "none; text-shadow: 2px 2px 5px rgba(255, 215, 0, 0.75)" }`
`commentFormStyle`	Style of `(comment ...)` form	`{"fontStyle": "italic"}`

Calva disables the VS Code built-in indent guides

The VS Code built-in settings editor.renderIndentGuides and editor.highlightActiveIndent do not have any effect, since the former is switched off by the Clojure Defaults, mentioned above. Use Calva Highlight's rainbowIndentGuides and highlightActiveIndent instead. They are different from the built in ones in that they are independent, meaning you can choose to have active indent highlighted while the guides generally are not rendered (this is the default, even).

VS Code bracket coloring vs Calva's

Calva's bracket coloring is more Clojure aware than VS Code's built-in coloring. And also will chime better with Calva's indent guides. If you like to have bracket coloring outside Clojure code, by all means enable it. Calva's bracket coloring will ”over paint” in Clojure files, when enabled. These settings work nicely:

"calva.highlight.highlightActiveIndent": true,
"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,

The calva.highlight.bracketColors setting can be used to harmonize the coloring between VS Code and Calva.