Re: xterm colors

[Thomas Dickey]

Thaddeus H. Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't know if it was controversial when you did it, but just in case

it wasn't.

> you were thinking of backsliding, please don't.  Your color patch to the
> xterm source was absolutely the right thing to do.  For a while, I had
> thought that Debian was going to release etch xterm with a
> black-on-white default, which was going to break long-established
> practice and cause me, at least, needless package-maintenance problems.
> But you have reverted the unwise upstream innovation.

You're mistaken.

upstream has "always" defaulted to black-on-white, while Debian has (for
several years) used something that resembled white on black.  The
comment which you cite is simply reiterating notes on an existing patch,
which was made simpler by providing commented-out settings in the
upstream sources.  The same set of upstream changes added commented-out
settings to correspond to a few other color schemes which are used in
other packages.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net


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xterm colors

[Thaddeus H. Black]

Branden and David:

I don't know if it was controversial when you did it, but just in case
you were thinking of backsliding, please don't.  Your color patch to the
xterm source was absolutely the right thing to do.  For a while, I had
thought that Debian was going to release etch xterm with a
black-on-white default, which was going to break long-established
practice and cause me, at least, needless package-maintenance problems.
But you have reverted the unwise upstream innovation.

Black-on-white terminals can be nice sometimes, they're not the right
style for a plain Debian xterm default.  Please continue to enforce your
traditional color patch in etch and beyond.  Also continue your
minimalistic conservation of the color palette and your sensible
accommodation of larger fonts.  Good style.

From xterm-210/debian/patches/900_debian_xterm.diff:
> $Id: 900_debian_xterm.diff 1449 2006-03-14 02:50:33Z dnusinow $
> 
> Make Debian-specific tweaks to xterm:
> * Set the default VT widget foreground and background colors to gray90 on
>   black, which approximates the color scheme of the Linux virtual console
>   (and approximates actual DEC VT terminals far more closely than
>   black text on a white background in any case).
> * Stop using an Xaw7 gradient for the backgrounds of the xterm menus; it
>   produces an unappealing effect if the menus are configured to use a
>   larger font than the stock configuration (also, xterm has added items to
>   some menus since I last calculated the gradient size and I can't be
>   bothered to do it again).
> * If the X server is capable of color and has more than 8 planes of color
>   depth available, set the menu colors to gray15 on antique white, and
>   customize the appearance VT widget's scrollbar.  Otherwise, do not eat up
>   precious entries in the color palette.
> 
> [...]
> 
> This patch by Branden Robinson.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Index: XTerm-col.ad
> ===
> --- XTerm-col.ad.orig 2006-03-13 21:25:38.0 -0500
> +++ XTerm-col.ad  2006-03-13 21:43:11.0 -0500
> @@ -7,9 +7,9 @@
>  *VT100*boldColors: on
>  *VT100*dynamicColors: on
>  
> -! Uncomment this for "white" text on a dark background.
> -!*VT100*foreground: gray90
> -!*VT100*background: black
> +! Set the default text foreground and background colors.
> +*VT100*foreground: gray90
> +*VT100*background: black
>  
>  ! - OR -
>  ! Uncomment this for black text on a "white" background.

-- 
Thaddeus H. Black
508 Nellie's Cave Road
Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA
+1 540 961 0920, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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