Syntax highlighting changes once LSP starts up

[bmo04]

I am using PyCharm 2025.2.0.1 (not pro)
I have no plugins installed besides RobotCode 1.8.0, LSP4IJ 0.15.0, and the plugins that came with the install.
This is on a company laptop, which I know can sometimes cause issues with other things, but I doubt it here.

When I open my project, the syntax highlighting is correct and follows what is defined for Robot Framework related files as shown in PyCharm's settings menu. Example:

After waiting a few seconds, I believe that the language server takes over and re-highlights incorrectly. Example:

For reference, here is the example in the PyCharm settings menu:

When I look at the language server, I see that there are no files types associated with the RobotCode Language Server under mapping. Though I have no idea if this is related or incorrect in any way.

This leads me to believe that some of the colors are simply falling back to default, but I am not sure.

File type associations are there as well

Is there something that I am doing incorrectly or a setting that I need to change?

[d-biehl]

This is completely correct.
First, the "standard" simple default syntax highlighting is applied, without any contextual information.
Once the language server starts, it adds additional semantic highlighting — for example, marking whether something is an import, a namespace, a built-in keyword, documentation, and so on. The exact appearance depends on the color theme you are using, so this can vary.

Robot Framework is very context-dependent. You can switch the entire language of Robot Framework files to Chinese, Spanish, or any other language, or you can transform simple test cases into template test cases. This is only possible because the syntax itself is analyzed first — something that basic syntax highlighting alone cannot do.

Also, there is no mapping based purely on file types. Instead, there is one mapping per language, and each language knows which files it can handle.

[bmo04]

Ahh, OK, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. I do prefer how the simple highlighting had, for example, a different color for the arguments as the keywords. Is it possible that I can change that myself?

[d-biehl]

I’m not quite sure what exactly you mean — the arguments do have a different color than the keywords, don’t they? Or do you mean named arguments, variables, and so on?

You can change almost every aspect of the coloring. PyCharm’s default colors are not particularly well balanced, and RobotCode simply uses PyCharm’s default colors as its own defaults.

Since I just got a new computer, I don’t have the possibility to take a screenshot right now, but here’s the link on how to change colors in PyCharm:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/configuring-colors-and-fonts.html#customize-color-scheme

In the color scheme settings, you should also find a section for Robot Framework. However, semantic highlighting doesn’t work there: you can change the color and format for everything, but you won’t see any changes in the preview for the semantic elements. That’s not an issue with RobotCode, but with PyCharm — they simply don’t provide an API for that.

[bmo04]

As an example
Before server start:

After server start:

I will check out the link to see what I can do with the colors though :)

[d-biehl]

Yes, that’s not a regular argument — it’s a keyword argument. But there should also be a setting for that, probably something like Inline Keyword or similar.

[bmo04]

I will check it all out. Thank you for all your help!