On 4/18/06, Darren Pilgrim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Eric Anderson wrote: > > > > If I could figure out how to make sh do colors, I'd do it. :) > > Please do not use colors in rc. Escape-sequenced colors make unacceptable > assumptions about the user and syslogd strips escape sequences anyway, so > it > would be of no use to logged consoles. Serial consoles introduce other > problems with buggy escape handling in third-party terminal programs. A > good text layout and descriptive status messages do far more for clarity > and > readability than any use of color ever can.
I understand your concerns regarding the "pollution" of rc messages with excess baggage such as ANSI-color sequences and attributes. The patches have been set up in such a way as to provide the "fancy" capability only on demand, and the "fancy w/ color" only as another toggle. I think that having a more defined status interface would be very beneficial (and using colors and other attributes supported by advanced terminal types seems to be what people would like). For instance, right now we just have the name of the service printed if it is started, otherwise an ugly (in my eyes) dump of its stderr is displayed on-screen. If we instead defined an API that defined a "Service Name" "Service Description" "Service Status" and "Error Code" then we could have a more manageable service structure (IMHO). I think this work toward making the service status messages prettier CAN ONLY BE GOOD. Even if "pretty colors" are deemed "too fancy" by the freebsd gods in the end. As for your "buggy escape handling" of third-party terminals: 1) Don't enable the feature and it won't be a problem, or 2) Don't use crappy third-party terminal software that will die when it recieves ^[[0;31;40m rather than setting the attributes to NormalText-Red-on-Black. In fact, I haven't heard of one for some time. -- Coleman Kane _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
