103 lines
3 KiB
Text
103 lines
3 KiB
Text
=pod
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I decided to do some experimentation with how the colours defined in ncurses
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are actually displayed in terminals, what the effects are of combining these
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colours with other attributes, and how colour schemes of a terminal can affect
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the displayed colours. To this end I wrote a small c file and ran it in
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different terminals and different configurations. Note that only the 8 basic
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NCurses colours are tested, the more flexible init_color() function is not
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used.
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B<Source code: > L<nccolour.c|http://dev.yorhel.nl/download/code/nccolour.c>
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(L<syntax highlighed version|http://p.blicky.net/xu35c>)
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Some screenshots can be found below, but more screenshots are always welcome!
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Please send your (.png) screenshots to projects@yorhel.nl.
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=head2 Notes / observations
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=over
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=item * The most obvious conclusion: the displayed colours do not have the
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exact same colour value in every terminal. Some terminals also allow users to
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modify these colours.
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=item * You can not assume that the default foreground or background colour can
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be represented by one of the 8 basic colours defined by NCurses.
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=item * Specifying -1 as colour, to indicate the default foreground or
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background colour, seems to work fine in any terminal tested so far.
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=item * All tested terminals render the foreground colour in a lighter shade
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when the A_BOLD attribute is set. This does not apply to the background colour.
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The result of this is that the text becomes visible when using A_BOLD when the
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foreground and background colour are set to the same value.
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=item * Unfortunately, not all terminals are configured in such a way that all
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possible colours are readable. So as a developer you'll still have to support
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configurable colour schemes in your ncurses application. :-(
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=item * On most terminals, setting the foreground and background colour to the
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same value without applying the A_BOLD attribute will make the text invisible.
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Don't rely on this, however, as this is not the case on OS X.
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=back
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=head2 Full screenshot
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To avoid wasting unecessary space, the comparison screenshots below only
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display the colour table. Here's a screenshot of the full output of the
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program, which also explains what each column means.
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[img scr nccol-full.png ]
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=head2 Screenshots
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=over
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=item Arch Linux, Roxterm, Default color scheme
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[img scr nccol-rox-b.png ]
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=item Arch Linux, Roxterm, GTK color scheme
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[img scr nccol-rox-w.png ]
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=item Arch Linux, Roxterm, Tango color scheme
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[img scr nccol-rox-t.png ]
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=item Arch Linux, Roxterm, Modified Tango color scheme
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[img scr nccol-rox-c.png ]
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=item Arch Linux, xterm (default settings)
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[img scr nccol-xterm.png ]
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=item Ubuntu 11.10, Gnome-terminal
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[img scr nccol-ubuntu.png ]
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=item Debian Squeeze, VT (default settings)
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[img scr nccol-debian.png ]
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=item FreeBSD, VT (default settings)
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[img scr nccol-fbsd.png ]
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=item Mac OS X, Terminal
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[img scr nccol-osx-terminal.png ]
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=item Mac OS X, iTerm2
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[img scr nccol-osx-iterm2.png ]
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=item CentOS 6.4
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[img scr nccol-centos64.png ]
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