5 ms·

> provide a [...] consistent experience Please just don't. This is not the web. Color usage in the terminal should be largely semantic, not stylistic. Speaki

by donatj 8mo ago

> provide a [...] consistent experience Please just don't. This is not the web. Color usage in the terminal should be largely semantic, not stylistic. Speaking for the group of people I know and work with, we don't want a "consistent experience" and hate TUIs that try to manhandle the color palette. Use color sparingly and with intention. Respect that different people have different settings.

johncoltrane 8mo ago
First, I make third-party Vim colorschemes, not app. People install my colorschemes because they like the colors, not because I'm a monster with a gun pointed at their face. No one is harmed. No one is forced to do anything they don't want. Outside of my text editor, where colors matter a lot to me for syntax highlighting, I'm definitely in the NO_COLORS camp (and in the NO_EMOJI camp, nowadays). > Color usage in the terminal should be largely semantic, not stylistic. I wholeheartedly agree but 0-15 sadly have zero inherent semantics, which is the single reason behind every terminal colors-related drama since forever: developer choses 9 to highlight an error message because it is generally a bright red by default --> user sets 9 to whatever makes sense to them --> error message is illegible.
- tambourine_man 8mo ago
  Can you link to your Vim colorschemes? I have a light and a dark one that I hacked over the years but I'm always looking for new ones.
  - johncoltrane 8mo ago
    My latest, "zaibatsu" is bundled with Vim. - Apprentice, a low-contrast colorscheme I made years ago and used for a long time: https://github.com/romainl/Apprentice https://github.com/romainl/Apprentice. - Malotru, my curent colorscheme, more contrasted: https://github.com/romainl/vim-malotru https://github.com/romainl/vim-malotru. - Dichromatic, for colorblind users: https://github.com/romainl/vim-dichromatic https://github.com/romainl/vim-dichromatic. - Bruin, which only uses typography: https://git.sr.ht/~romainl/vim-bruin https://git.sr.ht/~romainl/vim-bruin
    - tambourine_man 8mo ago
      Nice work. Apprentice looks great. Thanks for the links.
  - wredcoll 8mo ago
    Can you share your light one? I've never been able to find a white background scheme I actually love, rather than tolerate...
    - johncoltrane 8mo ago
      I prefer my background dark so light colorschemes are not really an area I've explored seriously. Also, dark colorschemes are much easier to design than light ones due to the disproportionate amount of light a white, say, background emits compared to the amount emitted by text. It dramatically reduces the number of colors you can use. I have one here: https://github.com/romainl/vim-sweet16 https://github.com/romainl/vim-sweet16 but it is intentionally weird and essentially unmaintained.
      - wredcoll 8mo ago
        =[ We have many millenia of books using black text on a white background with various colors added, why are computer monitors all of a sudden so special and annoying
        hnlmorg 8mo ago
        Because paper is naturally pale. So it would have been silly for people to colour them black. And because monitors are giant light bulbs. So a large white background is harder on the eyes than black.
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  It would be much better if application developers (and web developers, too) -only- had access to semantic color labels like TEXT, BACKGROUND, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, HIGHLIGHT, and so on, rather than red, yellow, blue, green, black. I don’t want my applications to decide “this element must be red text on green background.” I want my applications to annotate the UI with things like “warning message” and “title.”
  - johncoltrane 8mo ago
    I would really love to have that, too, on every "platform" I have to work on.
  - kps 8mo ago
    That could be done with a few influential terminal emulators adopting a consensus extension to ISO8613-6, like this: ESC[38:99:‹purpose›m for foreground, ESC[48:99:‹purpose›m for background. e.g. Foreground Background Purpose ----------- ----------- ------- ESC[38:99:0m ESC[48:99:0m normal ( same as ESC[39m and ESC[49m ) ESC[38:99:1m ESC[48:99:1m emphasise ESC[38:99:2m ESC[48:99:2m de-emphasise ESC[38:99:3m ESC[48:99:3m error ESC[38:99:4m ESC[48:99:4m warning ESC[38:99:5m ESC[48:99:5m caution ESC[38:99:6m ESC[48:99:6m notice Then people (themes) could easily choose foreground colour or background highlighting for particular roles. Some terminal emulators might also choose to configure other stylistic choices like bold, italic, etc. (I believe ISO8613-6 defines sub-modes 0 through 5 (te;db), with 2 (rgb) and 5 (256-color indexed) being most widely implemented. But some terminals historically mess up : and ; in CSI sequences, and I know at least one would interpret ESC[38:6:1m as ESC[6;1m (blinking bold!), so here I pick 99 (ECMA-48 defines modes up to 65).)
    - planckscnst 8mo ago
      "selected" and "highlighted" would also be useful
    - hnlmorg 8mo ago
      This is a fantastic idea! I’m working on a terminal emulator. It’s not big like Ghostty but this is something I might adopt
- makapuf 8mo ago
  My proposal would be to define a set of intents for 0-15 with sensible defaults and let terminal themes assign any color they would like to those. 0 would be background, 7 for foreground , 1 for highlight, 3 for titles, 4 for frames and from there work on backgrounds also..
ryandrake 8mo ago
Yes, and giving developers control over colors, text size, typeface and so on has also been a usability and accessibility disaster on the web, too! The user should have this control.
- duskdozer 8mo ago
  and animations... my bane...
pjmlp 8mo ago
I thought we had left TUIs behind in the 90's, instead it is rainbowns, unicorns, and whatever else going with those stylisic experiences.
- anthk 8mo ago
  Good TUI's arent bad for POS terminals and the like, where speed it's king, kinda like airports where the latency it's a matter of life of death. For everything else, just look at IBM: you have the old TUI with 3270 terminals and web 'bindings' to these to accomplish the same exact task but with a GUI interface. But OFC some airport assistant has an AS400 console on it and that's it sending commands at blitzing speeds. These interfaces have sense there; but not for a modern desktop OS shell as the main debugging environment.

by donatj 8mo ago

johncoltrane 8mo ago

First, I make third-party Vim colorschemes, not app. People install my colorschemes because they like the colors, not because I'm a monster with a gun pointed at their face. No one is harmed. No one is forced to do anything they don't want. Outside of my text editor, where colors matter a lot to me for syntax highlighting, I'm definitely in the NO_COLORS camp (and in the NO_EMOJI camp, nowadays). > Color usage in the terminal should be largely semantic, not stylistic. I wholeheartedly agree but 0-15 sadly have zero inherent semantics, which is the single reason behind every terminal colors-related drama since forever: developer choses 9 to highlight an error message because it is generally a bright red by default --> user sets 9 to whatever makes sense to them --> error message is illegible.

tambourine_man 8mo ago
Can you link to your Vim colorschemes? I have a light and a dark one that I hacked over the years but I'm always looking for new ones.
- johncoltrane 8mo ago
  My latest, "zaibatsu" is bundled with Vim. - Apprentice, a low-contrast colorscheme I made years ago and used for a long time: https://github.com/romainl/Apprentice https://github.com/romainl/Apprentice. - Malotru, my curent colorscheme, more contrasted: https://github.com/romainl/vim-malotru https://github.com/romainl/vim-malotru. - Dichromatic, for colorblind users: https://github.com/romainl/vim-dichromatic https://github.com/romainl/vim-dichromatic. - Bruin, which only uses typography: https://git.sr.ht/~romainl/vim-bruin https://git.sr.ht/~romainl/vim-bruin
  - tambourine_man 8mo ago
    Nice work. Apprentice looks great. Thanks for the links.
- wredcoll 8mo ago
  Can you share your light one? I've never been able to find a white background scheme I actually love, rather than tolerate...
  - johncoltrane 8mo ago
    I prefer my background dark so light colorschemes are not really an area I've explored seriously. Also, dark colorschemes are much easier to design than light ones due to the disproportionate amount of light a white, say, background emits compared to the amount emitted by text. It dramatically reduces the number of colors you can use. I have one here: https://github.com/romainl/vim-sweet16 https://github.com/romainl/vim-sweet16 but it is intentionally weird and essentially unmaintained.
    - wredcoll 8mo ago
      =[ We have many millenia of books using black text on a white background with various colors added, why are computer monitors all of a sudden so special and annoying
      - hnlmorg 8mo ago
        Because paper is naturally pale. So it would have been silly for people to colour them black. And because monitors are giant light bulbs. So a large white background is harder on the eyes than black.
ryandrake 8mo ago
It would be much better if application developers (and web developers, too) -only- had access to semantic color labels like TEXT, BACKGROUND, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, HIGHLIGHT, and so on, rather than red, yellow, blue, green, black. I don’t want my applications to decide “this element must be red text on green background.” I want my applications to annotate the UI with things like “warning message” and “title.”
- johncoltrane 8mo ago
  I would really love to have that, too, on every "platform" I have to work on.
- kps 8mo ago
  That could be done with a few influential terminal emulators adopting a consensus extension to ISO8613-6, like this: ESC[38:99:‹purpose›m for foreground, ESC[48:99:‹purpose›m for background. e.g. Foreground Background Purpose ----------- ----------- ------- ESC[38:99:0m ESC[48:99:0m normal ( same as ESC[39m and ESC[49m ) ESC[38:99:1m ESC[48:99:1m emphasise ESC[38:99:2m ESC[48:99:2m de-emphasise ESC[38:99:3m ESC[48:99:3m error ESC[38:99:4m ESC[48:99:4m warning ESC[38:99:5m ESC[48:99:5m caution ESC[38:99:6m ESC[48:99:6m notice Then people (themes) could easily choose foreground colour or background highlighting for particular roles. Some terminal emulators might also choose to configure other stylistic choices like bold, italic, etc. (I believe ISO8613-6 defines sub-modes 0 through 5 (te;db), with 2 (rgb) and 5 (256-color indexed) being most widely implemented. But some terminals historically mess up : and ; in CSI sequences, and I know at least one would interpret ESC[38:6:1m as ESC[6;1m (blinking bold!), so here I pick 99 (ECMA-48 defines modes up to 65).)
  - planckscnst 8mo ago
    "selected" and "highlighted" would also be useful
  - hnlmorg 8mo ago
    This is a fantastic idea! I’m working on a terminal emulator. It’s not big like Ghostty but this is something I might adopt
makapuf 8mo ago
My proposal would be to define a set of intents for 0-15 with sensible defaults and let terminal themes assign any color they would like to those. 0 would be background, 7 for foreground , 1 for highlight, 3 for titles, 4 for frames and from there work on backgrounds also..

ryandrake 8mo ago

Yes, and giving developers control over colors, text size, typeface and so on has also been a usability and accessibility disaster on the web, too! The user should have this control.

duskdozer 8mo ago
and animations... my bane...

pjmlp 8mo ago

I thought we had left TUIs behind in the 90's, instead it is rainbowns, unicorns, and whatever else going with those stylisic experiences.

anthk 8mo ago
Good TUI's arent bad for POS terminals and the like, where speed it's king, kinda like airports where the latency it's a matter of life of death. For everything else, just look at IBM: you have the old TUI with 3270 terminals and web 'bindings' to these to accomplish the same exact task but with a GUI interface. But OFC some airport assistant has an AS400 console on it and that's it sending commands at blitzing speeds. These interfaces have sense there; but not for a modern desktop OS shell as the main debugging environment.