Stacking Code

When you've got a PowerShell window open all day, the high contrast blue and white can get a little hard on the eyes. I'm currently (re)learning Vim and one of the first plugins I installed was the low contrast Zenburn colour scheme. It would be great if PowerShell had a similar colour scheme.

So how to set that up? It turns out a PowerShell window is capable of displaying any colour, but only sixteen of them at a time. Luckily someone has already figured out what the sixteen colours are for a Zenburn colour scheme, but didn't have much information on how to get them into a PowerShell shortcut.

After a bit of tinkering around on Windows 7 I found a new PowerShell shortcut will take its initial values from HKCU:\Console\<ShortcutName>. If that registry item doesn't exist, it will take them from HKCU:\Console instead. Rather than mess about with the console defaults, I plan to make a new registry item to match the shortcut name.

I've also noticed that once a couple of properties get changed on the shortcut, all the values are internalised (the shortcut size jumps -- mine when from 1.1KB to 1.3KB). At that point it's safe to delete the new registry item and still keep the custom colours.

Sounds a bit complicated -- and it is -- which makes me think there has to be an easier way. Until I find it though, here's a PowerShell script that tries to automate the process as much as possible.

# ZenburnPowerShell.psm1 by Adam Boddington
# http://stackingcode.com/blog/2011/11/14/zenburn-powershell
# Zenburn by Jani Nurminen
# http://slinky.imukuppi.org/zenburnpage

function New-ZenburnPowerShell {
    param (
        [string]$Name = $(throw "Name required.")
    )
    $shortcutPath = Join-Path $home "Desktop\$Name.lnk"
    $registryItemPath = Join-Path HKCU:\Console $Name
    # Remove existing shortcut and registry item.
    if (Test-Path $shortcutPath) {
        Remove-Item $shortcutPath
    }
    if (Test-Path $registryItemPath) {
        Remove-Item $registryItemPath
    }
    # Create new shortcut and registry item.
    New-Shortcut $shortcutPath
    New-RegistryItem $registryItemPath
    # Remember the registry item path.
    if (-not $script:registryItemPaths) {
        $script:registryItemPaths = @()
    }
    $script:registryItemPaths += $registryItemPath
    # Instructions for the final steps.
    "Change properties on `"$Name`" to internalise the registry values."
    "Then call Reset-Registry to perform the final cleanup."
}

function Reset-Registry {
    foreach ($registryItemPath in $script:registryItemPaths) {
        if (Test-Path $registryItemPath) {
            Remove-Item $registryItemPath
            "Removed `"$registryItemPath`""
        }
    }
}

function New-Shortcut {
    param (
        [string]$Path
    )
    $ws = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell
    $shortcut = $ws.CreateShortcut($Path)
    $shortcut.TargetPath = Join-Path $Env:windir System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
    $shortcut.WorkingDirectory = "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%"
    $shortcut.Save()
    "Created `"$Path`""
}

function New-RegistryItem {
    param (
        [string]$Path
    )
    $x = New-Item $Path
    # http://twinside.free.fr/dotProject/?p=125
    $colors = @(
        0x003f3f3f, 0x00af6464, 0x00008000, 0x00808000,
        0x00232333, 0x00aa50aa, 0x0000dcdc, 0x00ccdcdc,
        0x008080c0, 0x00ffafaf, 0x007f9f7f, 0x00d3d08c,
        0x007071e3, 0x00c880c8, 0x00afdff0, 0x00ffffff
    )
    for ($index = 0; $index -lt $colors.Length; $index++) {
        $x = New-ItemProperty $Path -Name ("ColorTable" + $index.ToString("00")) -PropertyType DWORD -Value $colors[$index]
    }
    "Created `"$Path`""
}

Export-ModuleMember New-ZenburnPowerShell, Reset-Registry

It's a module, so put it in Modules\ZenburnPowerShell\ZenburnPowerShell.psm1. Kick it off like this...

At this point there will be a new shortcut on the desktop called Zenburn PowerShell (or whatever name was chosen). Change a few properties on the shortcut, like font and window size (Consolas 16px looks great). Then...

And that's it. A new PowerShell shortcut with the Zenburn colour scheme is born, and the registry is left how it was found.