Re:Disabling ANSI color output
by tannhaeuser on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @02:24AM
(#16322812)
Don't know the details anymore, but the default experience on major Linuxen was to display plain files in blue color (eg. when listing files using the ls command). So that when you switched to an inverse (white-on-black) video setting from the default black-on-white, you had a hard time to read blue-on-black text for one of the most basic tasks on the command line without resorting to customize terminal colors. Don't know who came up with such a usability fail.
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The fundamental problem is how terminal colors are specified. The old non-color terminals had brightness and bold. The first color terminal, setting the standard, had just 8 colors without brightness control. Put those together, and you have 16.
The result is not what you'd like. You'd really like to specify an overall scheme (light on dark, or dark on light) and then hues for each character displayed.
That'd let you see green on green just fine. It wouldn't even be possible for the foreground and background to be identical, because one would be light and one would be dark.
I suppose that switching everybody over might not be as hard as I thought at first. Considering systemd, it only takes a manager at Red Hat to force a new standard. I sure would appreciate it.
Re:Disabling ANSI color output
by feelin_googley on Thursday February 08, 2018 @12:17PM
(#16333715)
Nice to see someone mention this. Sometimes I think I am the only one. This sort of thing is what scares me away from GNU/Linux whenever I try it, having spent so many years with a BSD that does not enable anything by default. Nothing wrong with customization, except when it is someone other than the user who is fiddling with it.
I am used to a black background. Seems like the logical "default" starting point in VGA textmode. Even Linux kernel output when booting starts on a black blackground.