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From: mwoehlke <mwoehlke AT tibco DOT com>
Subject:  Re: Color Schemes
Date:  Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:20:35 -0500
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> 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
We apologize for the inconvenience.


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