From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Lechner Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 17:25:28 +0000 Subject: Re: [PATCH] fbcon: Use background color for margins Message-Id: List-Id: References: <1501273590-3237-1-git-send-email-david@lechnology.com> <20170730094726.GB18381@amd> <2cafbde9-6b31-9586-e3eb-0b80355eab3c@lechnology.com> <20170730215108.GA806@amd> In-Reply-To: <20170730215108.GA806@amd> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Pavel Machek Cc: linux-fbdev@vger.kernel.org, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 07/30/2017 04:51 PM, Pavel Machek wrote: > Hi! > >>>> Screens that don't have a black border around the active area will have >>>> ugly black bars for the margin when the text background color is not black. >>>> This is especially noticeable on an LCD screen (not the backlit kind) when >>>> the terminal colors are inverted. >>> >>> Are you sure? >> >> Of course I am sure. Otherwise I would not send a patch. ;-) >> >> I have attached some pictures to explain it better. The default-console.jpg >> picture shows what it looks like using just defaults. I think it is hard to >> read the white text with the black background. >> >> So, the solution is to invert the terminal colors. But when you do this, the >> margins are not inverted, so you are left with black bars on the bottom and >> the right as seen in inverted-without-patch.jpg. >> >> With this patch applied, the margins are also inverted, so you don't have >> the black bars as seen in inverted-with-patch.jpg. I think this is much >> nicer. >> >> It is quite common to have different backgrounds in >>> different parts of the screen, how it is supposed to work there? >> >> There will be nothing different in this regard. Only the margins (non-text >> area) are changed. > > So you have something like midnight commander, which uses colors. > > Lets say top half of screen is normal, bottom one is inverted. What > color will borders be? > > Will not they do something stupid (such as changing) when the > curses-based application refreshes? > Ah. I see what you mean now. The margin will be whatever is set for the vc_video_erase_char in the kernel, which can be changed by userspace. I tried midnight commander and sure enough, I still have the black margins when I invert the screen (`setterm -inverse on`). Interestingly, after allowing the console to blank after a timeout, the console was blanked with white, then after pressing a key to unblank, the margins were also white. So, scratch this one. I will re-evaluate and send a new patch.