idlecolors

Print in colour in IDLE.

These functions will ONLY work in IDLE, they use a side effect of the IDLE syntax highlighting. Only use idlecolors for fun. To use colours properly in a terminal please use colorama or crayons

How do I install idlecolors

Right click the link to download the file idlecolors.py and save it onto your computer.

If you are using a Raspberry Pi, you could open a terminal and type the following command to copy the file:

git clone https://github.com/lawsie/idlecolors.git

How do I use colours

Open IDLE. Create a Python program in the same folder as the idlecolors.py file and add the following statement once at the start of your program:

from idlecolors import *

Then, you can use the printc() function along with the colour functions:

printc( red("Red text") )
printc( "If you add " + red("red") + " to " + blue("blue") + ", you get " + purple("purple") )

Random colours

You can also randomly select colours like this:

# Print a line in a random colour
printc( randcol("This is a random colour") )

End of line?

By default, the printc() function adds a newline character at the end of its output, just like print(). You can change the end character in the same way as you would with the print function by specifying an end argument as in the example below.

# Print each word in a random colour
mytext = "This is a random piece of text which I want to print in random colours"
mytext = mytext.split(" ")
for word in mytext:
    printc(randcol(word), end=" ")

What colours are available?

You can use the colours red(), orange(), green(), blue(), purple(), black(), brown() and randcol() for a random colour from this selection.

These colours are defined by the default syntax highlighting in IDLE (Options > Configure IDLE). If you have changed IDLE's colour scheme, the colours will not match!

Can I add more colours?

Yes, but it is not particularly straightforward and involves some configuration. You can define 5 custom user colours manually:

1. In IDLE, select Options > Configure IDLE, then click on the Highlights tab.
2. Click the drop down Normal text and select a type of text to change. In this example we will choose "Python Definitions" which is known in idlecolors as the colour user1().

3. Select a new colour by clicking on the Choose colour for drop down and selecting a colour from the palette:

4. Now open your copy of idlecolors.py file and change the USE_CUSTOM_COLORS value to True. (Be aware that this will also allow all of the user defined colours to be randomly chosen.)

USE_CUSTOM_COLORS = True       # Change to True if you want to use custom colours

5. You can now use the colour you selected for "Python Definitions" as user1().

from idlecolors import *
printc( user1("New colour"))

If you wish, you can change the name of the colour by editing the idlecolors.py file - you will need to edit both the colormap key and the function name.

Isn't this a really nasty hack?

Yes, yes it is.

Thanks

Credit for this idea came from this Stackoverflow thread. I made this because kids like colours. It's not at all meant to be used for anything serious.