Dust Light ▪ Theme for Notepad++

Description

A theme built around a very subtle shade of gray I call dust gray. It's completely unused/undiscovered color. It has a morsel of magenta in it that you wouldn't normally notice. All other colors of the theme serve to keep this fragile shade in tune, while they're also aligned to each other.

Supported languages

Assembly, Bash, Batch, C, C++, C#, CSS, HTML, INI, Java, JavaScript, Lua, Markdown*, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, XML, YAML
Everything else is usable but not arranged.
If the theme gets somewhat popular, I'll optimize more languages. (Especially on request of course.)

* For Markdown, read the Setting up Markdown section at the bottom of this page.

Installation

1. Click HERE to download all files in zip.
2. Go to %APPDATA%\Notepad++.
3. Open themes folder, or create a new folder named themes if it doesn't exists.
4. Install the xml in any of the following ways:
   • Copy the .xml file in the downloaded zip into the folder. Or
   • Import it to Notepad++ by going to Menu -> Settings -> Import -> Import Style theme(s).
5. Restart Notepad++.
6. Open Settings -> Style Configurator.
7. Select theme Dust Light from the theme drop-down box.
8. Click Save & Close.

Font

After much fiddling, I found that the basic Consolas font was the best fit.
I recommend turning DirectWrite on because that way the font is somewhat thicker.

Setting up Markdown

In the downloaded zip there is a Markdown directory. Copy markdown.DustLight.udl.xml to %AppData%\Notepad++\userDefineLangs

By default, if you open a Markdown file in NPP, the colors may be messed up, because another Markdown UDL is arbitrarily used instead of Markdown (Dust Light), and you have to select the correct UDL in the Language menu every time you open a .md file. As this practice is intolerable, it's worth putting a little work into avoiding it:

Open all Markdown UDLs in the userDefineLangs directory for editing, except markdown.DustLight.udl.xml. There you can see the following code:

<NotepadPlus>
    <UserLang name="Markdown (Theme Name)" ext="md markdown" udlVersion="2.1">

Replace ext="md markdown" to ext="" in all opened documents.

This way the Dust Light UDL will be the only relevant one to be associated with Markdown.

Author / contact

Laci Bene · laci.benemailee