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One issue with this article is that it seems to assume that everybody is using a black background. I know PuTTY supported white backgrounds, because that's what

by mcv 4y ago

One issue with this article is that it seems to assume that everybody is using a black background. I know PuTTY supported white backgrounds, because that's what I used. White background makes the blue perfectly readable; suddenly it's bright yellow that might be a problem. So anyone looking to fix terminal colours should not just pay attention to blue, or to how they look on black, but also to yellow and how it looks on white.

layer8 4y ago
You really need two different palettes for white vs. black background if all the (other) colors are to be readable with good contrast on the respective background.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  The problem here is that applications can set a background colour, and that as an application you don't know what colours the user defined. For example Angband just sets the background colour to black (not sure about Nethack), so if you defined colours that work well on a light background you're still going to have a bad time. Quite a few other terminal programs (especially those using ncurses or other interactive TUI interfaces) tend to set a background colour. There isn't really a good way to deal with this using the default 16 colours other than never setting any background colours, which can be a bit limiting for interactive applications. The best solution is to have application support for this and using 256 or 24 bit "true" colours (256-colour support is pretty much universal, and 24 bit colour support is very wide-spread).
  - layer8 4y ago
    The best solution is for the background color (and possibly other colors) to be configurable for the application, as many applications allow. If a user prefers white or black background, he/she usually prefers it in all applications. 256 or more colors has the drawback that the user can’t configure the colors anymore to his/her needs (light vs. dark, high-contrast, color blindness, etc.), unless the application also provides comprehensive theming support. In that case, the 16-color variant is a much simpler solution.

by mcv 4y ago

layer8 4y ago

You really need two different palettes for white vs. black background if all the (other) colors are to be readable with good contrast on the respective background.

Beltalowda 4y ago
The problem here is that applications can set a background colour, and that as an application you don't know what colours the user defined. For example Angband just sets the background colour to black (not sure about Nethack), so if you defined colours that work well on a light background you're still going to have a bad time. Quite a few other terminal programs (especially those using ncurses or other interactive TUI interfaces) tend to set a background colour. There isn't really a good way to deal with this using the default 16 colours other than never setting any background colours, which can be a bit limiting for interactive applications. The best solution is to have application support for this and using 256 or 24 bit "true" colours (256-colour support is pretty much universal, and 24 bit colour support is very wide-spread).
- layer8 4y ago
  The best solution is for the background color (and possibly other colors) to be configurable for the application, as many applications allow. If a user prefers white or black background, he/she usually prefers it in all applications. 256 or more colors has the drawback that the user can’t configure the colors anymore to his/her needs (light vs. dark, high-contrast, color blindness, etc.), unless the application also provides comprehensive theming support. In that case, the 16-color variant is a much simpler solution.