amancini/delphicolorpreview

DelphiColorPreview is a plugin for the RAD Studio Delphi IDE that shows a small color swatch right in the editor gutter next to any line of code containing a color value, similar to the inline color hints VS Code shows in its editor. Shift clicking a swatch opens a color picker, and choosing a new color rewrites that literal directly in your source code, in whatever format it was originally written. It understands the many ways Delphi code can express a color: named constants used by the classic VCL framework, the newer FMX framework's constants that include transparency, RGB function calls, several styles of hex color codes, web style hex strings inside quotes, and even plain decimal numbers, but only when they are being assigned directly to something whose name ends in Color, to avoid mistaking an ordinary number like a size or a loop count for a color. Because a bare hex code or a bare decimal number can be read in more than one byte order depending on which framework is being used, the plugin either figures out the right interpretation automatically by looking at the file's imports, or lets you pick and remembers your choice. Colors with transparency are shown blended over a checkerboard so you can actually see through them, and the color picker itself matches whichever light or dark theme the IDE is using. The plugin only works with RAD Studio 12 Athens or newer, because it relies on a code editor notification system Embarcadero introduced in that version, and it does not work with Delphi 11 or earlier. It is installed by opening the project file in the IDE, building it, and installing it as a design time package through the Project Manager, or by running an included batch file from the command line. Once installed, no menus or toolbars are needed. The swatches simply appear, and editing goes through the IDE's normal editor buffer, so changes made through the color picker can be undone with Ctrl+Z like any other edit.