Different colorisation for Json properties and values

Solution 1:

The Scintilla component used by Notepad++ is in charge of the lexers for syntax highlighting. Apparently, the designer of that lexer didn't decide to differentiate between property names and values, though it seems like a good idea. To make a suggestion for that improvement in the lexer, you'd have to go see if the most recent Scintilla JSON Lexer has already incorporated that change, and if not, put in a request with the Scintilla project. If the change is already there, or if Scintilla releases a new version with that fix for you, you would then have to ask Notepad++ developer to upgrade Scintilla to include that fix. (And the last time NPP upgraded it's Scintilla was from 3.34 to 3.56 -- about 4 years ago -- compared to the most-recent Scintilla 4.1.3)

Workaround #1: change the Style Configurator > JSON > Operator color to have something that stands out between the property and value -- maybe with a bright yellow background or something -- to make it easier for your eye to find the : separators, at least...

Workaround #2: In the Community Forums, Claudia Frank had done some work on a PythonScript-based lexer which would allow user defined languages with regular expressions, rather than the simplistic UDL 2.1. My collection of links to her effort is at https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/16164/bug-javascript-multiline-character-not-understood-by-notepad/11. With some effort, you might be able to define the regex necessary to parse JSON in a way you like.

update: You might be able to get a UDL (User Defined Language) to do what you want. I came up with a quick one that will get the highlighting differences you described. As a nasty side effect, it breaks folding (so cannot collapse { ... } pairs. (I tried setting the UDL folding options, but nested folds weren't working right, at least on my first attempt)

• Language > Define Your Language...: Create New = JsonPropertyValues.
• Operators & Delimiters
• Operators 1 = , : " ' { }, STYLER = set whatever colors you want for the punctuation
• Delimiter 1 style = OPEN: :, Close = ((EOL)), STYLER = set the color you want the VALUE side to be; set Nesting: to allow Operators 1
• Delimiter 2 style = OPEN: ", Close = ", STYLER = set the color for left-side (property) when in double-quotes, no nesting needed
• Delimiter 3 style = OPEN: ', Close = ', STYLER = set the color for left-side (property) when in single-quotes, no nesting needed

You might want to set Nesting: to include Numbers on all of those STYLER entries above. And then go to the Comment & Number tab and define the STYLER to set the coloring for numbers as well.

You could set the Ext box to json, if you want it to apply to all .JSON files, or you could just manually apply Language > JsonPropertyValues to any JSON that you want to parse in this manner.

Anyway, this is a reasonable starting point, based on what you described; feel free to customize it or expand it beyond the features included.