Settings editor

The reader's settings as an editable JSON tab, built from what every extension declared

settingsEditor puts a Settings row under the gear at the foot of the activity bar, and Preferences: Open Settings (JSON) in the command palette. Either opens a tab listing every setting key any mounted extension declared, at its current value — edit the value and it's written back as you type.

import { settingsEditor } from "codelet/extensions/settings";
import { Workbench, FileSystem } from "codelet/workbench";

const workbench = new Workbench({
  parent: document.getElementById("app")!,
  fs: new FileSystem({ "/README.md": "# Hello" }),
  extensions: [settingsEditor],
});

It takes no options and fetches nothing.

#Not a file in the tree

The tab is served under its own settings: scheme, not a file in your workspace. Settings belong to the page, not the project — a settings.json sitting in the tree would be mirrored to disk by remote, packed by tar, and shared by live, none of which is what a reader's own preferences are. Nothing in the explorer changes when the tab is open.

Where the values actually live is the workbench's settings option — localStorage by default, or a store of your own. See Settings.

#What the document holds

Every declared key, sorted, at what it reads as right now:

{
  "markdown.preview.theme": "dark",
  "typescript.suggest.autoImports": true
}

So the document is the list of what can be set, as much as what has been. The rules it round-trips by:

What you type	What happens
A value different from the default	Written to the store.
A value equal to the default	Removed from the store — the default is the manifest's to keep saying.
A key deleted from the document	The same: that setting reverts to its manifest default.
A key nobody declares	Kept as written, and flagged — it's a setting for an extension you're not running.
A value of the wrong type	Reported, not written — the manifest said what the key takes.
Half-typed JSON	Nothing written, until it parses again.

#Schema, completion and hover

The manifests double as the schema. Typing a key offers every key not already in the document, with its default and which extension declared it; hovering a key shows the same. Preferences: Open Settings Schema opens the generated JSON Schema itself, read-only.

None of this needs a JSON language server — the keys come straight from the manifests the workbench already holds. Mounting json() from codelet/extensions/lsp/json alongside changes nothing here; see Language servers.

#Reading settings from your own extension

The tab only edits what any extension can already read:

const theme = vscode.workspace.getConfiguration("markdown").get("preview.theme", "auto");
vscode.workspace.onDidChangeConfiguration((event) => {
  if (event.affectsConfiguration("markdown.preview")) redraw();
});

Declare the keys you read, or they have no default and never show up in the tab:

contributes: {
  configuration: {
    title: "Markdown",
    properties: {
      "markdown.preview.theme": {
        type: "string",
        default: "auto",
        description: "Which theme the preview paints in.",
      },
    },
  },
},