[gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

Hi, All,

For quite a few years I've had a low level irritation with the font
colors in my x11-terms/terminal.  I like a white background and a
black font in my terminals, and that satisfies me perfectly 99.44% of
the time.  The colors that appear by default with the ls command are
perfect.  But the colors that appear when I do an emerge -ptDuNv, and
the colors that appear when interactively merging config files with
dispatch-conf (configured to use vimdiff) are sometimes completely
unreadable.  In particular, the light yellow font on a white
background that portage uses sometimes is almost invisible.  I have
tried now and then in the past to develop my own color scheme, but
without notable success.  I once tried making the yellow darker in
various ways, and that helped, but then the (formerly yellow) text
became unreadable if I highlighted it.  I tried dark backgrounds for a
while, but I guess I have too many years of reading black print on
white pages; dark backgrounds are just "wrong" for me.  And I haven't
found any satisfactory answers with web searches.  Is there anybody
with a font color scheme they like for use on a white background?

Thanks for any suggestions,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:43:54 -0400, John Blinka wrote:

> For quite a few years I've had a low level irritation with the font
> colors in my x11-terms/terminal.  I like a white background and a
> black font in my terminals, and that satisfies me perfectly 99.44% of
> the time.  The colors that appear by default with the ls command are
> perfect.  But the colors that appear when I do an emerge -ptDuNv, and
> the colors that appear when interactively merging config files with
> dispatch-conf (configured to use vimdiff) are sometimes completely
> unreadable.  In particular, the light yellow font on a white
> background that portage uses sometimes is almost invisible.

You can remap the colours portage uses in /etc/portage/color.map. See man
portage and man color.map for details.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

c:>Press Enter to Exit

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Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:43:54 -0400, John Blinka wrote:
>
> You can remap the colours portage uses in /etc/portage/color.map. See man
> portage and man color.map for details.
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick
>
> c:>Press Enter to Exit
>

Thanks for the color.map pointer.  A web search turns up one person's solution:

http://forum.soft32.com/linux/gentoo-portage-color-map-light-background-ftopict332304.html

A /etc/portage/color.map file containing just this one line makes the
"invisible" yellow portage output legible on my white background:

yellow=brown

I appreciate the help.  Problem solved!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[Bill Longman]

On 03/23/2011 11:23 AM, John Blinka wrote:
> Thanks for the color.map pointer.  A web search turns up one person's solution:
> 
> http://forum.soft32.com/linux/gentoo-portage-color-map-light-background-ftopict332304.html
> 
> A /etc/portage/color.map file containing just this one line makes the
> "invisible" yellow portage output legible on my white background:
> 
> yellow=brown
> 
> I appreciate the help.  Problem solved!

That *is* much better. Thanks!

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[Bill Longman]

On 03/22/2011 08:43 AM, John Blinka wrote:
> Hi, All,
> 
> For quite a few years I've had a low level irritation with the font
> colors in my x11-terms/terminal.  I like a white background and a
> black font in my terminals, and that satisfies me perfectly 99.44% of
> the time.  The colors that appear by default with the ls command are
> perfect.  But the colors that appear when I do an emerge -ptDuNv, and
> the colors that appear when interactively merging config files with
> dispatch-conf (configured to use vimdiff) are sometimes completely
> unreadable.  In particular, the light yellow font on a white
> background that portage uses sometimes is almost invisible.  I have
> tried now and then in the past to develop my own color scheme, but
> without notable success.  I once tried making the yellow darker in
> various ways, and that helped, but then the (formerly yellow) text
> became unreadable if I highlighted it.  I tried dark backgrounds for a
> while, but I guess I have too many years of reading black print on
> white pages; dark backgrounds are just "wrong" for me.  And I haven't
> found any satisfactory answers with web searches.  Is there anybody
> with a font color scheme they like for use on a white background?
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions,

Will someone please answer John so I can use it too?!!!!

And for that matter, does anyone who uses a dark background AND uses
vimdiff as their etc-update tool run up against the same issue: vimdiff
mode and certain syntax highlighting rules combine to make some sections
of documents completely illegible.

My workarounds are to use vim's "syntax off" in *each* window (PITA)
which solves the vimdiff problem.

For poor color, I use xterm's Ctrl-Middle menu to go dark background.

And most of root's vim sessions seem to think my background is dark, so
I'm constantly have to do ":set bg=light".

I use xterm.

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[Mick]

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On Tuesday 22 March 2011 16:30:28 Bill Longman wrote:
> On 03/22/2011 08:43 AM, John Blinka wrote:
> > Hi, All,
> > 
> > For quite a few years I've had a low level irritation with the font
> > colors in my x11-terms/terminal.  I like a white background and a
> > black font in my terminals, and that satisfies me perfectly 99.44% of
> > the time.  The colors that appear by default with the ls command are
> > perfect.  But the colors that appear when I do an emerge -ptDuNv, and
> > the colors that appear when interactively merging config files with
> > dispatch-conf (configured to use vimdiff) are sometimes completely
> > unreadable.  In particular, the light yellow font on a white
> > background that portage uses sometimes is almost invisible.  I have
> > tried now and then in the past to develop my own color scheme, but
> > without notable success.  I once tried making the yellow darker in
> > various ways, and that helped, but then the (formerly yellow) text
> > became unreadable if I highlighted it.  I tried dark backgrounds for a
> > while, but I guess I have too many years of reading black print on
> > white pages; dark backgrounds are just "wrong" for me.  And I haven't
> > found any satisfactory answers with web searches.  Is there anybody
> > with a font color scheme they like for use on a white background?
> > 
> > Thanks for any suggestions,
> 
> Will someone please answer John so I can use it too?!!!!
> 
> And for that matter, does anyone who uses a dark background AND uses
> vimdiff as their etc-update tool run up against the same issue: vimdiff
> mode and certain syntax highlighting rules combine to make some sections
> of documents completely illegible.
> 
> My workarounds are to use vim's "syntax off" in *each* window (PITA)
> which solves the vimdiff problem.
> 
> For poor color, I use xterm's Ctrl-Middle menu to go dark background.
> 
> And most of root's vim sessions seem to think my background is dark, so
> I'm constantly have to do ":set bg=light".
> 
> I use xterm.

Sorry I don't have an answer to the OP, although Neil's suggestion should 
allow him to get rid of yellow fg colour.

@Bill:  Is colordiff any better/different than vimdiff?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Bill Longman <bill.longman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/22/2011 08:43 AM, John Blinka wrote:
>
> And for that matter, does anyone who uses a dark background AND uses
> vimdiff as their etc-update tool run up against the same issue: vimdiff
> mode and certain syntax highlighting rules combine to make some sections
> of documents completely illegible.

Same thing happens with a light background.

john

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[Stroller]

On 22/3/2011, at 4:30pm, Bill Longman wrote:
> ...
> And for that matter, does anyone who uses a dark background AND uses
> vimdiff as their etc-update tool ...

I would be interested to know how one does this.

Stroller.