3 ms·
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
by 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 agoThis is a fantastic idea! I’m working on a terminal emulator. It’s not big like Ghostty but this is something I might adopt
- kps 8mo agoAfter thinking about it a bit more, I think the specific details of that (i.e. inventing an extended colour mode) are not ideal. One alternative: Assign semantics to colour indexes above 256. Both of those have the disadvantage that they separate foreground and background colour, but a user really wants a combined semantic presentation. For instance, a user might want a warning message to be black text on a yellow background, and not have to rely on the program remembering to set both foreground and background to ‘warning’ colour. So another possibility is just to invent new SGR numbers, e.g. Control Purpose ------------ ------- CSI 2 0 0 m normal (undoes any CSI 1 x x m) CSI 2 0 1 m emphasise CSI 2 0 2 m de-emphasise CSI 2 0 3 m error CSI 2 0 4 m warning CSI 2 0 5 m caution CSI 2 0 6 m notice ⋮ Then the user can configure those as they please with any combination of foreground, background, weight, slant, etc. I'm now thinking about writing up pros and cons of alternatives.
- zzo38computer 8mo agoI like this idea, although I think that they should be only one code, which might program both the foreground and background (and font styles if applicable), rather than separate codes for foreground and for background.
- kps 8mo agoYes, since this morning, I've thought a little more and agree. (I just finished replying to another reply.) Anyone interested, ping me (address in profile) and encourage me to set up a repo to discuss and formulate a concrete proposal.
- kps 8mo agoOK, I've started making notes on this at https://codeberg.org/datatravelandexperiments/semantic-terminal-presentation https://codeberg.org/datatravelandexperiments/semantic-termi... . Feel free to jump in, or volunteer to adopt the whole thing.