Mail Archives: cygwin/2006/08/31/14:21:46
> Aha!
>
> Clicking on the icons and spinning the number wheels is NOT the same
> thing at all! :-(
Right.
> The real issue I'm having as the naive user is the colors dialog GUI
> human interface.
...and for the record, I hate that UI. :-) It isn't very well designed IMO.
> [snip]
> 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?
Um, yeah, something like that. The tty knows what color codes it is
using ('0;30' - '0;37' and '1;30' - '1;37'), which have "standard"
colors assigned to them, e.g. '0;30' is "black", but you are correct
that if you change the mapping, the underlying programs (ls, man, etc)
don't know that you have done so.
> 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?
I think what you were doing before was telling the OS to use '1;37' as
the default background color, which confused the heck out of
applications that expected it to be '0;30'.
> 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.
Right, it is not a very intuitive system. (Time to plug Console again;
it has the same features but is less confusing.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/)
> 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:
Right. To edit the mapping ("palette"), you have to pick a color...
which changes the default code used for background (or whatever radio is
selected), edit the color, and then re-select the previously-selected
color. It's a bad design.
> #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.
> [snip]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ :-)
Otherwise, you're complaining about a Windows component and need to
bitch to Microsoft (and good luck with that).
> 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.
Feel free to suggest an 'apply' button for Console
(http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=43764&atid=437332). Then you
would just 'ls' (or whatever) at a regular command prompt, and then
'Apply' would update the window for instant results.
> 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.
Right; 'doze is not big on color in console programs.
> 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.
Yup. But it sounds like you might like Console a lot better. :-)
Or, before Gary tries to convert me again, rxvt will let you do the same
things, although it's more traumatic a switch than Console (note it
isn't installed by default; you need to install it via setup.exe).
> I appreciate everybody's input on this, and apologize that it has
> turned out to be completely OT, as far as I can tell.
Well, you can always http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TITTTL :-), although I
still think it's at least somewhat relevant.
--
Matthew
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