Change Emacs syntax highlighting colors

Question

I\'m running Emacs, editing files in C++ mode and PHP mode. I love syntax highlighting as a concept, but the default colors are a travesty. I can barely read some of them: w

Answer 1

2 ways - you can install the package color-theme, which has lots of nice schemes to select and is easier to do it by hand. The by-hand looks like this (in your .emacs)

(custom-set-faces
   custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
   If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
   Your init file should contain only one such instance.
   If there is more than one, they won't work right.
  '(default ((t (:inherit nil :stipple nil :background "lightyellow2" :foreground "gray20" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil :underline nil :slant normal :weight bold :width normal :family "liberation mono"))))
  '(background "blue")
  '(font-lock-builtin-face ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "Turquoise"))))
  '(font-lock-comment-face ((t (:foreground "MediumAquamarine"))))
  '(font-lock-constant-face ((((class color) (background dark)) (:bold t :foreground "DarkOrchid"))))
  '(font-lock-doc-string-face ((t (:foreground "green2"))))
  '(font-lock-function-name-face ((t (:foreground "SkyBlue"))))
  '(font-lock-keyword-face ((t (:bold t :foreground "CornflowerBlue"))))
  '(font-lock-preprocessor-face ((t (:italic nil :foreground "CornFlowerBlue"))))
  '(font-lock-reference-face ((t (:foreground "DodgerBlue"))))
  '(font-lock-string-face ((t (:foreground "LimeGreen"))))

...

etc. etc.

You can also type

`M-x customize-face RET`

which will give you all the customizations to set, ultimately end up in your .emacs.