[gentoo-dev] use of color

[gentoo-dev] use of color

[Collins Richey]

The shell and many of the tools on Gentoo use color which choice I find to
be absolutely worthless however popular this bit of eye candy may be for
others.  On XFCE the default background for Terminal makes the color
displays almost illegible.

Could someone post instructions to find and kill the color settings, ie
shell prompt, man, and any other tools that use color setting.

TIA
-- 
Collins Richey
Denver Area
Gentoo_rc5 XFCE

Re: [gentoo-dev] use of color

[Gontran]

* Collins Richey (erichey2@home.com) wrote:
> The shell and many of the tools on Gentoo use color which choice I find to
> be absolutely worthless however popular this bit of eye candy may be for
> others.  On XFCE the default background for Terminal makes the color
> displays almost illegible.
> 
> Could someone post instructions to find and kill the color settings, ie
> shell prompt, man, and any other tools that use color setting.

Hi Collins,

This kind of depends on your shell, but basically boils down to a single 
line in an rc file.

For BASH: in ~/.bashrc, say at the bottom, add
	export PS1="$ "
( or whatever you'd like your prompt to be)

For (t)csh: in ~/.(t)cshrc add the line
	set prompt="> "

Now if you're using sh for your shell, you may want to look at /etc/profile
and hack about in those conditions at the 'export PS1' lines.

You'll need to re-source those files, or relogin, or start a new XFterm to
see the effects.

Far as getting man to be without color (sicko), modify or create a
.mostrc file in ~/ and add the following lines to it:

	color overstrike normal default
	color underline normal default

Or you could just change your default environment variable PAGER from 
'most' to 'less' (sounds like a bad idea doesn't it?).

If that's not working or whatever, most does look at your term settings
so, again depending on your shell, change your term variable to a term
type that doesn't support color and you should get shades of gray.

Now to add a counter opinion: I find the use of color in all aspects of Gentoo
not only tremendously refreshing but valuable.  Contrast man!  Thank you Gentoo
for introducing me to most!  The inclusion of 'most' I find to be VERY 
professional, it reminds me of how cool man pages on OBSD VT look.  
And thank you for the color indicators in things like 
'emerge --pretend *.ebuild'! That's the smoothest.

Woo-hoo!
Gontran

Re: [gentoo-dev] use of color

[Collins Richey]

[ snips ]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:12:55 -0700 Gontran <gontran@gontran.net> wrote:

> * Collins Richey (erichey2@home.com) wrote:
> > The shell and many of the tools on Gentoo use color which choice I
> find to
> > be absolutely worthless however popular this bit of eye candy may be
> for
> > others.  On XFCE the default background for Terminal makes the color
> > displays almost illegible.
> > 
> > Could someone post instructions to find and kill the color settings,
> ie
> > shell prompt, man, and any other tools that use color setting.
> 

> Now if you're using sh for your shell, you may want to look at
> /etc/profile
> and hack about in those conditions at the 'export PS1' lines.
> 

> Or you could just change your default environment variable PAGER from 
> 'most' to 'less' (sounds like a bad idea doesn't it?).
> 

> Now to add a counter opinion: I find the use of color in all aspects of
> Gentoo
> not only tremendously refreshing but valuable.  

Thanks, Gontran, this is just what I needed.

I agree with you wholeheartedly.  For the vast majority of users,
colorization adds a really spiffy, professional touch.  For me -
colorblind and less than 20-20 eyesight - the color is an irritant, and it
renders illegible certain essential bits of info.  Therefor, a plain
vanilla screen is a very good thing (tm).

So now I have  
     export PS1='\u@\h \W #' for root
     export PS1='\u@\h \W $' for others
     export PAGER='/usr/bin/less'
And I am overjoyed with the results.

BTW, this also corrects a Gentooism that is IMHO in very poor taste - the
standard Gentoo setup does not differentiate the root/other prompt with
#/$ as does every other distro in the known universe.

Thanks again for your help,
-- 
Collins Richey
Denver Area
Gentoo_rc5 XFCE

Re: [gentoo-dev] use of color

[Terje Kvernes]

Collins Richey <erichey2@home.com> writes:

> BTW, this also corrects a Gentooism that is IMHO in very poor taste
> - the standard Gentoo setup does not differentiate the root/other
> prompt with #/$ as does every other distro in the known universe.

  I second that motion. the #/$-thing is something that's just
  _expected_. 

-- 
Terje