From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 13 21:09:32 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26A6A10656A3 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from QMTA08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (qmta08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net [76.96.62.80]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C08278FC17 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from OMTA06.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.62.51]) by QMTA08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id SL2e1a00B16LCl058M9Tms; Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:27 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([69.181.141.110]) by OMTA06.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id SM9V1a00L2P6wsM3SM9WL2; Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:30 +0000 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=QycZ5dHgAAAA:8 a=W1pzl8lHR0QcZ0j7-eAA:9 a=gf4q5nyBC5YpPAF9nemLcYb3FnoA:4 a=EoioJ0NPDVgA:10 a=_RhRFcbxBZMA:10 a=LY0hPdMaydYA:10 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 8C2ACC9419; Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:09:29 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:09:29 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: borish@gmx.de Message-ID: <20081013210929.GA28598@icarus.home.lan> References: <20081009190941.GA12014@icarus.home.lan> <20081010190028.GA40991@icarus.home.lan> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall colors X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:09:32 -0000 On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 09:42:04PM +0200, borish@gmx.de wrote: > After some trial and error, I put > > XTerm*color7: #bebebe > > in my .Xdefaults. Now the yellow sysinstall font is much more legible > inside an xterm. This works for both xterm and rxvt. The rxvt man page > proved very useful. > > Now I have solved my problem but other users may experience the same > problem. Is it possible to modify sysinstall so that it uses a darker > background gray when run inside xterm? I'm not sure this is desirable or recommendable. There are some terminal emulation programs -- specifically, PuTTY -- which emulate TERM=xterm. The RGB colours in PuTTY look just fine: quite legible. The key problem here is this: there are no more darker grey backgrounds available with the limited colour set available. You get one grey bg -- sequence \e[47m; -- and that's it. If you want other colours, you have to have a 256-colour xterm compiled, which supports an extended palette, and there's no way to detect if someone has such a capable terminal (basing it on $TERM is not correct). This is one of the limitations of (pardon my use of this term) ANSI colour palettes. Background colours are more limited than foreground. > If not, we should add a note in the handbook. An entry in the Handbook could be: "If the default colours chosen are hard to read or make text illegible while using xterm or rxvt, please see for how to adjust the RGB values for grey and other colours". Ideally, we should see about getting rid of the whole grey background thing -- otherwise, stick with using black text with bright red letters for the quick-jump menu keys. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |