Re: [gentoo-user] Why are gentoo people so in love with colorized output?!?

[Dan Farrell <dan@spore.ath.cx>]

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:07:02 +0200
Tony Stohne <tstohne@bredband.net> wrote:

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> Mick said the following on 2007-04-05 19:07:
> | ...
> | Hmm, neither less not cat give me color output.  Passing --color=y
> to either
> | tells me things like:
> | ==============================
> | There is no color=y option ("less --help" for help)
> | ==============================
> |
> | I also tried --color but it's all still shown in black & white.  How
> do you
> | pipe a file and get it to show in color?  Am I missing something in
> | my .bashrc or elsewhere?
> 
> To make less interpret color escape sequences, you need the -R option.
> export LESS=-R in your shell startup script and you-ll have it as
> default. Generally, you don't want to use less -r, which allows
> arbitrary control characters through to affect the terminal (which
> tend to create major garbage).
> 
> Color is added via ANSI escape sequences, which don't work in all
> displays/terminals/consoles, but as an example: grep is smart enough
> to detect this and won't use color (even when specified) if you're
> sending the output via a pipeline. Otherwise, if you piped the
> output, eg to less, the ANSI escape sequences would send garbage to
> the screen.
> 
> ~ If, on the other hand, that's really what you want to do (without
> the garbage), there's a workaround:
> 
> use the --color=always to force it through and call less with the -R
> flag (which prints ALL RAW control characters). That way, the color
> codes will escape correctly and you'll page through screens of text
> with your matched patterns in full color:
> 
> grep --color=always "regexp" the_file_you_want_to_wade_through | less
> -R
> 
> That should do the trick :)
> 
> //Regards Tony
> 
> PS. Have a nice Easter everyone!
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> =w/na
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Hey tony,  maybe this is beyond your control, or maybe you don't care,
and if not i respect your autonomy in such matters, but your reply
block punctuation character '|' defeats the very helpful colorization
of my and many other browsers that use the usual '>' character to
identify reply text.  It makes your letters nearly unreadable.  
respects, - dan
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