Settings File (JSON)

You can specify more editor settings in the global Visual Studio Code settings.json file:

1. On the Visual Studio Code Settings page, click Open Settings (JSON), ().

   This opens the global settings.json in the editor. The location of the file is %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Code\User (Windows) or ~/.config/Code/User (Linux) for default installations.

2. Type settings and their values as described in Microsoft: Visual Studio Code - User and Workspace Settings.

   For example, you can configure:

   COBOL rulers

   The Rocket COBOL extension applies default rulers when you open a COBOL file in the editor. The rules enable you to identify easily the COBOL areas and columns. You can configure these by changing the language defaults in the settings.json. For example, you can change the location of the rulers in the following section:

       "[cobol]": {
           "editor.rulers": [
               6,
               7,
               72
           ]
       }

   Smart Edit and COBOL tab stops

   If you would like to enable editing features that preserve the left hand margin for fixed and variable source format COBOL code, you can enable Smart Edit and improved COBOL tab stops.

   {
       "microFocusCOBOL.editor.improvedTabStops": true,
       "microFocusCOBOL.editor.smartEdit": true
   }

   You can customize your tab stops even further by specifying each column that should be a tab stop.

   {
       "microFocusCOBOL.editor.customTabStops": [6, 7, 19]
   }

   COBOL Source format and dialect

   Use the following settings:

   {
       "microFocusCOBOL.dialect": "Enterprise COBOL for z/OS",   
       "microFocusCOBOL.sourceFormat": "fixed"
   }

   Custom colors for the COBOL words

   You can customize the colors of the COBOL words in the editor. This can be useful if your Visual Studio Code theme makes it difficult to see certain colors.

   Use the editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations property with the rules option, and modify the settings prefixed with cobol. For example:

   {
       "editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
           "enabled": true,
           "rules": {
               "cobol-identifier": "#3b8dda",
               "cobol-keyword": "#ff0000",
   }