How do we set the IBM i RDi Dark Theme?

I’m getting old — 50 earlier this year — and my eyesight is failing. Seriously, I bought some of those old man reading glasses from Walmart. You know the ones, the “old people” ones! 🙂   Five bucks for a little old Victorian style pair of readers that perch on the end of your nose and let us old programmers read comfortably for a change (without squinting or holding things out at arm’s length)…. but I digress…

Last week I was grinding away writing some RPG OA Screen handlers. Kind of new territory for me, lots of reading web pages, scrimping code samples, editing, refactoring and many hours of nose to screen, typing and coding. I had a slight head ache at end of a couple of days.

“Must be from squinting” I think “perhaps a darker desktop will be more relaxing on my eyes?” I decide

So, I decided to switch my desktop into a dark mode and make the fonts slightly bigger. It’s taken me a couple of days to get used to it but I like it.

If you fancy doing the same thing, you can make Windows Dark like this:

Enable Dark Mode for Windows 10 Settings and Apps

To enable the dark theme, head to Settings > Personalization > Colors.

Scroll down and select “Dark” under “Choose your app mode”.

The Settings application itself will immediately turn dark, as will many other “Universal Windows Platform” applications. However, it’s up to each developer to support the dark theme, and some applications will continue using their normal colors.

Make your IBM i Terminal Emulator Dark

Head to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors (or just click the COLOR button on the toolbar)

I change the BACKGROUND color setting to Black. But it looked a little to dark so I used custom color button to set it a few clicks lighter – now its a comfortable dark grey. I also set the GREEN to use a foreground color of a white/yellow which I like the look of:

Make your Rational Developer Code Editor Dark

Take RDi to the Dark Side

First, set the main theme to dark in Preferences> Appearance > General > Appearance and set THEME to DARK

This will make the RDi main tool all dark but if you choose to only have the code editing BODY (the LPEX editor) you can tweak Preferences > LPEX EDITOR > Appearance and choose BLM – Black Lines Matter aka IBM i RDi Dark Themeas the Pallette

That’s all she wrote.

Having said that I prefer a slightly lighter code entry window so I choose a light grey for my preferred colour:

Just goes to prove that #BLM really does matter 🙂

This is a very old blog, for several years Visual Studio with the Code 4 IBM i Plugin is my recommended RPG code development tool.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) offers several advantages over IBM Rational Developer for i (RDi) for IBM i code development: Its lightweight, open-source nature provides a highly customizable and modern development environment, supporting a wide range of extensions tailored for IBM i, such as RPGLE, CL, and DDS syntax highlighting, code formatting, and debugging tools. VS Code’s vibrant ecosystem, with extensions like Code for IBM i, enables seamless integration with IBM i systems, offering features like PASE support, SQL integration, and modern source control with Git. 

Unlike RDi, which feels heavy and outdated, VS Code is cross-platform, regularly updated, and free, making it accessible for developers. 

Additionally, its intuitive interface, robust community support, and compatibility with modern DevOps workflows make it a more flexible and cost-effective choice for IBM i development compared to RDi’s more rigid, proprietary structure.

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