[gentoo-user] emerge colors and light background

[gentoo-user] emerge colors and light background

[Klaus Ethgen]

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Hi Folks,

I recently start with gentoo due to frustration of the rapidly degrading
quality of debian.

Currently I have pretty good feelings about gentoo but there is one
thing that is pretty annoying.

I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
simple unreadable (like light green). I searched how to adapt them to my
background but did not success. I already know about color.map but this
just allows to tune some colors and not all (at least the ones that are
documented in the man page).

So, is there any way (without using --nocolor) to use color set that is
more readable?

Regards
   Klaus
- -- 
Klaus Ethgen                                       http://www.ethgen.ch/
pub  4096R/4E20AF1C 2011-05-16            Klaus Ethgen <Klaus@Ethgen.ch>
Fingerprint: 85D4 CA42 952C 949B 1753  62B3 79D0 B06F 4E20 AF1C
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Re: [gentoo-user] emerge colors and light background

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 19 Apr 2018 08:16:30 +0100, Klaus Ethgen wrote:

> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
> simple unreadable (like light green). I searched how to adapt them to my
> background but did not success. I already know about color.map but this
> just allows to tune some colors and not all (at least the ones that are
> documented in the man page).

I use a light background in my terminal and use color.map to deal with
it. You can replace specific colours in color.map as well as changing
colours for functions, such as:

green = purple
yellow=brown


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WinErr 019: User error - Not our fault. Is Not! Is Not!

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[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-04-19, Klaus Ethgen <Klaus+gentoo@Ethgen.de> wrote:

> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
> simple unreadable (like light green).

Yep, it's awful.  People have been complaining about it for years and
years.

> I searched how to adapt them to my background but did not success.

The short answer is: you can't.  The devs use black backgrounds and
you're supposed to also.

> I already know about color.map but this just allows to tune some
> colors and not all (at least the ones that are documented in the man
> page).
>
> So, is there any way (without using --nocolor) to use color set that is
> more readable?

Nope.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I hope I bought the
                                  at               right relish ... zzzzzzzzz
                              gmail.com            ...

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-04-19, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2018 08:16:30 +0100, Klaus Ethgen wrote:
>
>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>> simple unreadable [...]

> I use a light background in my terminal and use color.map to deal with
> it. You can replace specific colours in color.map as well as changing
> colours for functions, such as:
>
> green = purple
> yellow=brown

Hmm. I never could get that to work acceptably, but maybe I should try
again. Does anybody have a color.map they'd care to share for
terminals with white backgrounds?

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Isn't this my STOP?!
                                  at               
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 10:36 AM, Grant Edwards
<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2018-04-19, Klaus Ethgen <Klaus+gentoo@Ethgen.de> wrote:
>
>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>> simple unreadable (like light green).
>
> Yep, it's awful.  People have been complaining about it for years and
> years.
>
>> I searched how to adapt them to my background but did not success.
>
> The short answer is: you can't.  The devs use black backgrounds and
> you're supposed to also.
>
>> I already know about color.map but this just allows to tune some
>> colors and not all (at least the ones that are documented in the man
>> page).
>>
>> So, is there any way (without using --nocolor) to use color set that is
>> more readable?
>
> Nope.
>

My sympathies to the OP.  I fought against dark terminal backgrounds
for years (paper is white and ink is black, right?), tweaked all the
colors through every mechanism I knew of, and never did arrive at a
satisfactory result.  I finally decided to waste my time in other,
less frustrating pursuits, and turned all my backgrounds black.  Now
everything works perfectly, and I'm used to dark backgrounds.  Problem
solved.  You, of course, are free to prefer light backgrounds, but in
my experience Grant's answers ("You can't" and "Nope") sum up the
situation so precisely and succinctly that I just had to laugh
(thanks!).

John

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[R0b0t1]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Grant Edwards
<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2018-04-19, Klaus Ethgen <Klaus+gentoo@Ethgen.de> wrote:
>
>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>> simple unreadable (like light green).
>
> Yep, it's awful.  People have been complaining about it for years and
> years.
>
>> I searched how to adapt them to my background but did not success.
>
> The short answer is: you can't.  The devs use black backgrounds and
> you're supposed to also.
>
>> I already know about color.map but this just allows to tune some
>> colors and not all (at least the ones that are documented in the man
>> page).
>>
>> So, is there any way (without using --nocolor) to use color set that is
>> more readable?
>
> Nope.
>

You need to find a light color theme that works well. You should edit
your .Xdefaults (older documentation references .Xresources, which
does not seem to be parsed by some modern utilities or X11 servers) to
use that colorscheme. See the "export" tab on https://terminal.sexy/.

Pretty much every terminal should honor .Xdefaults, but if not, you
will need to change the colors in a menu.

If portage uses 256-color codes to specify an absolute color then that
should be changed, it makes the program unthemable via the standard
interface. It would also be an issue if portage used the less common
RGB color escapes.

Cheers,
     R0b0t1

Re: [gentoo-user] emerge colors and light background

[James Cloos]

>>>>> "KE" == Klaus Ethgen <Klaus+gentoo@Ethgen.de> writes:

KE> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
KE> simple unreadable (like light green).

I also use light backgrounds for my terminals.

For eix, I have this in a file in /etc/eixrc/:

BG0=none
BG1=none
BG2=none
BG3=none
COLORSCHEME0=3
COLORSCHEME1=3


That is not as good as eix did before the current 256-color schemes were
added, but it is not unreadable.

For portage, I find its color choices to be OK.

My environment includes:

COLORFGBG='0;15'
COLORTERM=rxvt

And in ~/.Xdefaults I have:

 URxvt*background: white
     URxvt*color3: chocolate4
    URxvt*color11: chocolate2

For terms like xterm and the rxvts you can configure any X11 colors for
each of the numbered terminal colors.

URxvt's default colours are:

! color0     (black)          = Black
! color1     (red)            = Red3
! color2     (green)          = Green3
! color3     (yellow)         = Yellow3
! color4     (blue)           = Blue3
! color5     (magenta)        = Magenta3
! color6     (cyan)           = Cyan3
! color7     (white)          = AntiqueWhite
! color8     (bright black)   = Grey25
! color9     (bright red)     = Red
! color10    (bright green)   = Green
! color11    (bright yellow)  = Yellow
! color12    (bright blue)    = Blue
! color13    (bright magenta) = Magenta
! color14    (bright cyan)    = Cyan
! color15    (bright white)   = White
! foreground                  = Black
! background                  = White

I'm sure most terminals have some way of doing that sort of configuration.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 0x997A9F17ED7DAEA6

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2018-04-19 08:16, Klaus Ethgen wrote:

> I recently start with gentoo due to frustration of the rapidly
> degrading quality of debian.

Hello, good to meet you again ;-)

> Currently I have pretty good feelings about gentoo but there is one
> thing that is pretty annoying.
> 
> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
> simple unreadable (like light green). I searched how to adapt them to
> my background but did not success. I already know about color.map but
> this just allows to tune some colors and not all (at least the ones
> that are documented in the man page).

It depends on your terminal app.  I use (u)rxvt and I remap the colors
for it globally.  Here are the settings (from .Xresources):

*.beNiceToColormap: false
Rxvt.background: seashell
Rxvt.color10: green4
Rxvt.color11: orange2
Rxvt.color14: cyan4
Rxvt.color2: green3
Rxvt.color3: orange
Rxvt.color6: cyan3
Rxvt.foreground: Gray40

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet and on broken lists
which rewrite From, fetch the TXT record for no-use.mooo.com.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Daniel Frey]

On 04/19/18 07:38, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2018-04-19, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Apr 2018 08:16:30 +0100, Klaus Ethgen wrote:
>>
>>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>>> simple unreadable [...]
> 
>> I use a light background in my terminal and use color.map to deal with
>> it. You can replace specific colours in color.map as well as changing
>> colours for functions, such as:
>>
>> green = purple
>> yellow=brown
> 
> Hmm. I never could get that to work acceptably, but maybe I should try
> again. Does anybody have a color.map they'd care to share for
> terminals with white backgrounds?
> 

My /etc/portage/color.map simply has:

green = purple
yellow = darkred
darkyellow = turquoise

I just did a `emerge -ep world` and I can read all of the output.

It's really only the lighter colours you need to worry about.

I only have the one machine I have a white background on, and now I
can't even remember why I set it that way.

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-04-19, Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org> wrote:
> On 2018-04-19 08:16, Klaus Ethgen wrote:

>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>> simple unreadable (like light green). I searched how to adapt them to
>> my background but did not success. I already know about color.map but
>> this just allows to tune some colors and not all (at least the ones
>> that are documented in the man page).
>
> It depends on your terminal app.  I use (u)rxvt and I remap the colors
> for it globally.  Here are the settings (from .Xresources):
>
> *.beNiceToColormap: false
> Rxvt.background: seashell
> Rxvt.color10: green4
> Rxvt.color11: orange2
> Rxvt.color14: cyan4
> Rxvt.color2: green3
> Rxvt.color3: orange
> Rxvt.color6: cyan3
> Rxvt.foreground: Gray40

Doesn't that mess up the colors for other applications?

Or do you use the custom urxvt settings just for emerge et alia?

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Are we laid back yet?
                                  at               
                              gmail.com            

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2018-04-19 20:57, Grant Edwards wrote:

> > It depends on your terminal app.  I use (u)rxvt and I remap the
> > colors for it globally.  Here are the settings (from .Xresources):
> >
> > *.beNiceToColormap: false
> > Rxvt.background: seashell
> > Rxvt.color10: green4
> > Rxvt.color11: orange2
> > Rxvt.color14: cyan4
> > Rxvt.color2: green3
> > Rxvt.color3: orange
> > Rxvt.color6: cyan3
> > Rxvt.foreground: Gray40
> 
> Doesn't that mess up the colors for other applications?

Of course it does, and that's the idea.  Otherwise I'd have the same
problem with these other applications!

> Or do you use the custom urxvt settings just for emerge et alia?

If you really needed that, it can be done with the urxvt -name option
which controls which Xresources entries apply.  I mentioned it the other
say over on the openbox list when someone asked for a way to change
terminal windows' icons.

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet and on broken lists
which rewrite From, fetch the TXT record for no-use.mooo.com.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Wols Lists]

On 19/04/18 16:28, John Blinka wrote:
> My sympathies to the OP.  I fought against dark terminal backgrounds
> for years (paper is white and ink is black, right?), tweaked all the
> colors through every mechanism I knew of, and never did arrive at a
> satisfactory result. 

Paper is reflective, and ink absorbs light - the opposite of a screen,
where the background is dark and the text emits light.

You do know green is a primary colour, right?

I'm not saying you're wrong to want a light background and dark text,
but there are good reasons for why a screen defaults to the opposite of
paper. (And defaults don't work for everybody :-)

Cheers,
Wol

(The three *subtractive* primaries are the well-known red, yellow and
blue. The three *additive* primaries are red, *green* and blue. Probably
(one of) the reasons why old terminals were "green screen".)

[gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[Martin Vaeth]

James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> wrote:
> For eix, I have this in a file in /etc/eixrc/:
>
> BG0=none
> BG1=none
> BG2=none
> BG3=none

If you only use colorscheme 3 you need only BG3=none

> COLORSCHEME0=3
> COLORSCHEME1=3

The former (...0=3) should have no effect at all if your TERM
is recognized by eix as 256-color capable.
The latter (...1=3) should have no effect if you really have

> COLORFGBG='0;15'

in your environment: Then automatically the scheme
for white background should be chosen (from the
default value COLORSCHEME1="1 3").

> That is not as good as eix did before the current 256-color schemes were
> added

Really? With ...=0 (instead of ...=3) you get the "old" colors.
Is this really better readable even on white bg?
An attempt to "adapt" this for white bg is ...=2 (instead of ...=3):
That uses from the 8/16 system colors only those which are presumably
readable on white bg.

BTW, if somebody wants to invest time to generate a better color scheme
for 256 colors and white background for eix, I invite you to submit patches.
The requirements for acceptence of a new/alternative 256 color scheme are

1. none of the 8/16 system colors are used (because their default
values depend on the terminal and its customization and are thus
not "fixed")

2. of course readability on white background

3. differently marked things must look different _optically_ on
white background.

4. (technical detail: Use %{BG3} for the background).

2 and 3 together reduce the "apparently available" 240 colors
to a surprisingly small number. Try "eix --256d" to get an idea,
noting that not only some colors printed close to each other are
optically almost undistinguishable (the cube has 3 dimensions...)

If somebody wants to invest the time and needs just technical help,
drop me a pm or - perhaps better so that other possible contributors
can read, too - open a bug for eix on github.