Arch Linux

I just checked and this fix still isn't there, even though it seems obvious. Any reason the proposed fix didn't make it?

Proposed patch to fix it makes background black for all text, leaves everything else:

--SNIP--
--- /etc/rc.d/functions 2004-02-19 12:50:09.000000000 -0600
+++ /etc/rc.d/functions 2005-03-06 11:12:01.000000000 -0600
@@ -9,16 +9,16 @@

if [ "$USECOLOR" = "YES" -o "$USECOLOR" = "yes" ]; then

- C_MAIN="\033[1;37m" # main text
- C_OTHER="\033[1;34m" # prefix & brackets
- C_SEPARATOR="\033[1;30m" # separator
+ C_MAIN="\033[1;37;40m" # main text
+ C_OTHER="\033[1;34;40m" # prefix & brackets
+ C_SEPARATOR="\033[1;30;40m" # separator

- C_BUSY="\033[0;36m" # busy
- C_FAIL="\033[1;31m" # failed
- C_DONE="\033[1;37m" # completed
+ C_BUSY="\033[0;36;40m" # busy
+ C_FAIL="\033[1;31;40m" # failed
+ C_DONE="\033[1;37;40m" # completed

- C_H1="\033[1;37m" # highlight text 1
- C_H2="\033[1;36m" # highlight text 2
+ C_H1="\033[1;37;40m" # highlight text 1
+ C_H2="\033[1;36;40m" # highlight text 2

C_CLEAR="\033[1;0m"
fi
--SNIP--

Sample of what this looks like can be found here: http://neotuli.net/~simo/images/screenshot-20050306_1113.jpg

It is not pretty, but since this is a rare scenario, and the complaint is readability, this fix addresses it.

I have attached everything needed, sorry I forgot about attachments.

it is a matter of taste, of course, but those green colors like in gentoo are not only nice, but functional as well

like this:
C_MAIN="\033[1;32m"

I think that trying to propose a color scheme that suits everyone is an inherently difficult problem... I think the best solution would just be to have an option that suppresses colorized output. That way you can be guaranteed that the output will at least be readable.

I change 37 with 39, example: C_MAIN="\033[1;39m" and seem to be ok for black or white terminal.

i agree just using
C_MAIN="\033[1;0m" # main text
and i disagree this beeing an unimportant problem. it can archlinux even render unusable when connected from a seriell console. and yes i do that often

Any progress on this? It seems like a stupid problem with several easy fixes. A lot of people use terminals with white background. Gnome terminal has a white background by default. Thanks.

Man, here's what I hate about things like this. If your terminal's green looks bad on a white background, then change it. It's not my fault that your colorscheme looks like crap

Here's a good example of what I mean: http://img.phraktured.net/terminals/theme-twentyfour.png

Regardless, I guess I'll have to fix this or people will complain more, eh?

Actually i'm talking about the yellow here, becouse you really _can't read_ it. It's not a matter of taste.
Aaron: awesome. mind making that public? :P

Still, the point remains. If you can't read your yellow on your terminal, modify the way the yellow looks. This request would be similar to "please fix your web page, I only have crappy fonts installed and the web page looks crappy".

There are LOTs of other scripts that use yellow (makepkg, for instance). The best I can do here is force a black background as suggested above. Would that be sufficient?

it would make it a readable default, wich was my main concern, but it will surely make some other people angry.
i'm glad i'm not in your position here.:P

forcing black background on [status] text is unnoticeable on black terminals (which most people use, I guess)
though someone with blue/pink/etc. terminal will complain (but that chance is less than for white terminals anyway :P).
Anyway with new initscripts release I think we can finally close this venerable report.

P.S.: Aaron, please post colortheme.sh somewhere ;) (we're too lazy to write it by ourselves :P)

http://code.phraktured.net/?p=config.git;a=blob;f=bin/colortheme.sh

It looks awfull with that black backgroun, pleeese change it :)
Transparent terminals have now no point because text has background :|

It appeared that the "fix" looks worse on transparent terminals. :-(
I know it's bikeshedding, but maybe just leave things as they were before and let's those people just override stat_* functions via the new functions.d functionality?
(or just plain old USECOLOR="no" or NoUpgrade=etc/rc.d/functions (with modified color codes).

It looks fine on my transparent terminal. Again, it sounds like your terminal color scheme looks like crap.
You people are picky as all hell. I'm going to stick with the current solution until someone else gives me a patch.

That's just standard Linux Colors scheme in gnome-terminal *shrugs*.
I just pointed out what I've observed & you're free to take any decission you want.
This isn't deadly critical at all. ;)

Oh no Roman, I wasn't griping at you. It was more general. Time was, we had Arch users that would do things themselves. These days they want us to do it for them while satisfying 100% of users.

The purpose for this bug report was _readability_. That is a valid assertion - that some of the text is unreadable. But it being "ugly" is not really that big of a deal. Aesthetics are, sadly, not my job.

Anyone is welcome to modify colors, and do whatever they want. In fact, the functions.d feature was added for this very reason - so people can modify files without needing to merge them when new packages come out.

The solution is easy-peasy - split out the color assignments to a separate file - /etc/rc-color.conf
Then people can customize just that file.

Enclosed is how it's done. I've taken the liberty of changing ;37m to ;32m so that those of us lepers with a white background can actually *see* the words - that would be a sane default, hint hint ;)

You can do this currently by placing that file in /etc/rc.d/functions.d/ - it will be sourced after /etc/rc.d/functions is, so you can override anything there

Aah, you must mean testing/initscripts. OK, that sounds fine. Now let's get back to arguing about what the *default* colors should be :)

In initscripts 2008.03-4, /etc/rc.d/functions should include the following end line:

source_functions

So that a custom colors file in /etc/rc.d/functions.d/ actually gets used with /etc/rc.d/ service scripts.

Then, source_functions can be removed from:

/etc/rc.multi
/etc/rc.single
/etc/rc.sysinit

Nice catch, thanks!
Thomas, do you have a problem with that change?