On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 11:41:35PM -0400, Peter Cordes wrote: > > Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:56:52 -0600 > > From: Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org > > Subject: Re: blue on black is unreadable > > > > On 21-Mar-00, 20:06 (CST), Peter Cordes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > The Linux text console is readable (barely), but xterm uses and even > > > worse > > > colour for ANSI blue. (assuming black background). The fix for this > > > is to change the colour used by xterm for ANSI blue, instead of changing > > > all > > > apps to use a different ANSI colour escape code. > > > > That's a neat trick for xterms,
... but it makes default midnight commander setting in a xterm wacky (lightgray and white on bright blue...). > > Thanks :) > > > but since even you admit that > > blue-on-black is only "barely" readable on the text console, wouldn't it > > be better to just not have default configurations use blue-on-black? (It > > shouldn't be a matter of changing apps, only default configs.) > > > > Actually, I took another look at the console. The ANSI bright-blue used by > ls for directories is actually quite easy to see. The normal blue used by > lynx is not great, but readable. I'm sure there is a way to set the colours > the kernel uses somewhere, so doing this would be the best option. actually, there is a program doing this (ctheme), it works in userspace, modifying VGA palette. It is really great, has many themes included, and can modify palette on per-console basis. I am thinking of packaging it, when I get some spare time.... > > > If you're setting up a default color scheme for an app, the basic "rule" > > is to use light colored text on dark backgrounds, and dark colored text > > on light backgrounds. The only other thing you need to know is that > > neither red nor blue are "light" colors. > > Unless the darkish colours get used as alternate background colours, they > are wasted. There only are 16 colours, so deciding to never use 4 > ({dark ,}{blue,red}) of them seems like a bad idea. Brightening them up so > they look good on a black background is good, since hardly anything uses > dark-but-not-black background colours. (jed uses blue for it's status line, > but yellow is still visible against the BLUE_COLOUR I suggested.) and midnight commander uses blue as background. > > Is there a reason why /etc/X11/Xresources/xterm defaults to black on white > instead of gray90 on black? With my colour mods to make ls output visible, > could the default change to be gray90 on black? Most new users won't get > around to finding the xterm resources file for a long time, and I imagine > they would be happier with black bg xterms until they do. We should cater > to users who don't know where you change everything by having a nice set of > default colours. This isn't like keymaps and stuff, since it only looks > different, and isn't nearly so hard to get used to. I personally like lightgray background and black foreground in xterm, because this way small fonts are more readable... these preferences vary a lot between users. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- | Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ | | __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk | ----------------------------------------------------------- Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus. Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!