Re: Color Schemes

["Richard Lynch" <ceo at l-i-e dot com>]

[Using my REAL email to follow-up]

On Wed, August 30, 2006 8:28 pm, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> René Berber wrote:
>> Richard Lynch wrote:
>>
>>> This may be a generalized Un*x question, but I've been going in
>>> circles for
>>> awhile now, and cygwin is the current beast being beaten on.
>>>
>>> I like color-coding of ls and vim and man and all that.
>>>
>>> But I can't handle the default color scheme.  My eyes are too old.
>>>
>>> So I changed the colors in cygwin DOS-like shell preferences to
>>> black
>>> foreground and white background.
>> [snip]
>>> I suspect (and hope) that I've just missed some mind-numbingly
>>> simple tool to
>>> change the color scheme system-wide...
>>
>> Simple alternative: use rxvt.
>>
>> Rxvt in its default mode appears as black over white, "man man"
>> looks fine
>> because it doesn't try to use colors (under rxvt) instead it uses
>> bold, "ls"
>> looks OK but not great, the executables appear as green over
>> white...
>>
>> I use reverse video (white on black) so I'm not sure if there are
>> other details
>> with the scheme you are trying to use.

I attempted to use rxvt at some point, and failed...

I dunno if I just haven't installed it yet or what.

I'll explore that further.

> I guess I've become lost in the discussion of this problem and that.
> I always
> use cmd.exe with bash.  I just change the colors for foreground and
> background
> to be what I want by picking "Defaults" from the system menu.  I make
> my
> background white and my foreground black, click "OK" and I'm set to
> go.  If I
> see an visual artifacts in any of the tools, I just close the window
> where I
> made these changes and open a new one.  That seems to reset things
> just fine.
> After that, I never have to worry about the colors again.  Can't say
> why if
> this doesn't just work for others.  I've used this approach on
> multiple
> machines and I'm always happy with it.

Aha!

Clicking on the icons and spinning the number wheels is NOT the same
thing at all! :-(

The real issue I'm having as the naive user is the colors dialog GUI
human interface.

>From the visual presentation of the color dialog, it is impossible (or
darn near) to tell the difference from altering the numbers and
clicking on the colors.

I.e., if I open the Properties dialog and click on Colors and click on
the little squares, the numbers change, as does the sample display
below.

If I change the numbers instead of clicking on the icons, the sample
display below changes the same way.

I'm still not clear on what that actual difference is...

Actually...  Okay, *NOW* I see that there is an "outline" around the
color selected in the icons, except it's always black, so you cannot
see it when black is selected...

Perhaps it would be more clear if there was a pointer or radio buttons
or something that one was altering the underlying representation of a
color, rather than choosing a different color for an underlying
presentation.  (Or whatever.  I can't even figure out the words to
describe it, as the dialog has so few words on it.)

Also, the layout of the digit boxes up by the foreground/background
radio buttons makes those seem "more" associated with that than with
munging the color palette down below.

I THOUGHT that changing the numbers and clicking on the icons was the
same thing, and they are not the same at all.

They give the same feedback in the sample output however, and the
little square around the selected icon is not enough of a difference,
imho, for the naive user to understand what is going on here.

As I understand it, the OS thinks it is still using white-on-black,
but cygwin is mapping those to white-on-black in the drawing routines.
 Right?

Whereas before, I was changing the very definition of "black" to be
255,255,255 and white to be 0,0,0 -- and that just confused the heck
out of the OS.  Right?

This was not at all clear from the layout and the controls.

What's more, there's a real goofy disconnect here between all the
OTHER colors that can be affected.

For example:
After re-setting the background to 0,0,0 and foreground to 255,255,255
and then choosing the white icon for background and black icon for
foreground, 'man man' was much better.

I found that the grey color of args and such-like, however, was too
difficult to read.

So I wanted to alter the 128,128,128 color to a darker greyscale value.

To do that, I have to click on the color icon, which changes whatever
radio button is selected at the top, then muck with the numbers to
alter the underlying values of "grey" to a different "grey", then
click back on another color icon to get what I want for the radio
button.

In other words, editing the palette has been inextricably linked with
altering foreground/background, and it's quite a confusing
non-intuitive jumble of two different activities:

#1) Altering the colors selected for 4 visual elements, out of dozens
of visual elements that are actually in use in the underlying OS.

#2) Altering the very definition of individual colors like "black" to
be something other than 0,0,0

This is not all just a rant -- I'd really like to suggest a better
alternative.

IMHO, the altering of the values to re-define a color should be
separated from choosing a color for the [popup] fore/back ground.

Mucking with the definition of what "black" means using the numbers
should be achieved with more effort -- perhaps right-click on the
icons or in an "Advanced" dialog.

And it should be VERY clear that the user is changing "black" to mean
something very not what anybody would expect "black" to mean if they
much with the numbers of "black"

I *think* this would be fairly easy to do with some simple
dialog/layout changes.

It would also be Really Nifty (tm) if some common utils such as ls and
less output could be included in the sample output, so that one could
play with the colors without endlessly opening/closing the dialogs.

I realize that might be a ton more work (or it could be very easy,
depending) but would make for a much better User Experience, imho.

I'm not sure for how many years I've been doing this wrong in Windows
shell setup, but it never ever occurred to me that I was changing the
definition of "black" to 255,255,255 and the definition of "white" to
0,0,0 -- rather than just choosing black for my foreground and white
for my background...

Apparently I never noticed as 'Doze doesn't have anything I use in
shell that color-codes anything anyway.

And now I realize that cygwin probably has zero control over this
dialog, and it's entirely Microsoft's fault.  That explains a whole
lot.

I appreciate everybody's input on this, and apologize that it has
turned out to be completely OT, as far as I can tell.

-- 
Like Music?
http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm



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