Re: [Nano-devel] [PATCH] bright colors without bold

[Brand Huntsman]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2018 12:34:05 +0100
Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:

> When an index is above the number of colors that the terminal
> supports, nano should simply bring the index into range: blank the
> upper bits.

That is a terrible idea. Everything would be clamped to white and would be 
unreadable on a white background. It is much better to ignore the color regex 
and use default color. The grayscale mapping to 8-colors causes enough issues 
with white backgrounds. Clamping index colors would cause problems on 16-color 
terminals too, and those are more likely to use a white background.


> > The first patch adds a "brightisnotbold" command that changes the
> 
> Bright should never mean bold.  Bright should stop meaning also bold,
> as it does now.

That would break compatibility with existing syntaxes and require everything to 
be converted to use the bold attribute. I'm all for changing bright to only 
mean bright, but you'd probably want to ask others how they feel. It would not 
only break custom syntaxes but also syntaxes shipped with other programs.

equery f conky |grep nanorc
/usr/share/nano/conky.nanorc


> > Second patch adds a new ! prefix to make bright colors.  
> 
> No.  "!" means "not"; to make it mean something else is confusing.

Well sure, but it also has other meanings, even in programming. Rust macros all 
end with !. It emphasizes the color by making it brighter. I wanted it after 
the color name but that would have complicated the code.

The brightisnotbold option allows bright to be redefined without breaking 
compatibility or using a new semi-confusing ! prefix.