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Forum LockedFiguring out colors for Linux?

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TonyG View Drop Down
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    Posted: December 18 2020 at 2:29pm
I asked a similar question a couple years ago and there was another similar one just last year. But this is a bit different...

When using Linux (Ubuntu or others) there are many styles used by ls, vi, grep, etc. As noted elsewhere, AccuTerm settings does not include the full possible range of attributes - the "unlikely ones" are not in the UI. But I'm finding that there are some common color attributes used in Linux that cannot be changed in AccuTerm settings.

For example:
- Term type is 'linux' in client and server.
- Font is Conolas, normal style, UTF-8.
- With 'vi', I open a bash script with comments starting with the "#" character. The foreground text color is Cyan, as identified in Settings > Tools > Screen > Colors > Palette.
- If I change the screen color Cyan to the system color blue (x0000ff), the screen text color does indeed change to blue.
- But there is no defined Attribute (dim, reverse underline, etc) that has the foreground Text color set to Cyan.

Rather than just figuring out this one setting, perhaps there is a solution to the bigger challenge. There must be a key/value table that pairs an attribute name with its escape sequence for a given term type. So the Blink attribute gets linked to ESCk]b or whatever the sequence is for the 'linux' term type that is identified with that function. Might there be some code that displays escape sequences and their corresponding attribute names? Further, can we then translate that to the proper value in the .atcf/.atsp file?

Now that the config file is JSON and not INI format, it's much more cryptic. The customPalette and customColors fields are tough to parse.

To be more specific, it looks like that text in vi is highlighted using ESC[1mESC[36m and ESC[m+x0E (?) for on/off. I got that by using Alt+C to capture text to the clipboard, unchecking the filter that removes those escape sequences. Capture the text and paste it in VSCode or another editor. It's cryptic but somewhat readable. One can do the same with any command like 'ls', where there is some control over highlighting with --color options.

In some documentation I'm sure we'll find those codes right next to the name of the attribute name, or perhaps there's a DEFINE statement somewhere in a file that associates the code with a name. I'd like to see the name as a text value, rather than an escape sequence, and detail about which elements in the .atsp file are used to set the colors for that attribute type.

There is a better way to do some of this, and that would be to look in the Linux file system to see what codes it's using for specific applications and functionality. But that still doesn't help us to figure out where to tell AccuTerm about the required changes to match some attribute that's being used.

Ideally, this challenge could be addressed with enhancements in AccuTerm color/palette settings that include all of the possible settings, verified over different systems and term types, and perhaps some way to detect which setting is being used on the screen. Right now I find out which attributes are being used by changing a color, Apply, change another, Apply... and eventually exit without saving all of the bad changes just so I can come back and change the final one that I care about. I only do that about once per year when the screen colors irritate me, but it's an ugly process.


In summary, please work out a way to do this stuff better in the application, or to help us to figure out and modify the settings for ourselves.


Thanks for taking the time to understand this request. I hope that overall it's clear.
Tony Gravagno Nebula Research & Development
TG@ Nebula-RnD . com
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