suggestion: ANSI color codes manpage

suggestion: ANSI color codes manpage

[Leonardo Boiko]

Hi,

I often find myself wanting a quick reference for ANSI color escapes,
in the same spirit as ascii(7), units(7), or operator(7).  So I went
ahead and wrote one.  (I'm aware this information is available in
console_codes(4), but I wanted something simpler and more to the
point).  I don't know if this is a good idea or just useless bloat,
and I have no prior experience with troff, but if you guys think it's
acceptable, feel free to include it.

The file is available at http://namakajiri.net/code/ansicolors.7 ; if
you think it's ok, I'll send it to mtk.manpages like the webpage says.

-- 
Leonardo Boiko
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: suggestion: ANSI color codes manpage

[Petr Baudis]

  Hi!

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 05:48:05PM -0300, Leonardo Boiko wrote:
> I often find myself wanting a quick reference for ANSI color escapes,
> in the same spirit as ascii(7), units(7), or operator(7).  So I went
> ahead and wrote one.  (I'm aware this information is available in
> console_codes(4), but I wanted something simpler and more to the
> point).  I don't know if this is a good idea or just useless bloat,
> and I have no prior experience with troff, but if you guys think it's
> acceptable, feel free to include it.
> 
> The file is available at http://namakajiri.net/code/ansicolors.7 ; if
> you think it's ok, I'll send it to mtk.manpages like the webpage says.

  my first reaction was also that this is redundant to console_codes(4),
but after some thought, I think I do like the idea of having quick
reference just for the basic text attributes.

  Couple of points:

  * I think web references are mostly avoided and not relevant or
necessary here. All of them talk about escape sequences in general,
so they belong to console_codes(4) if anywhere, but in fact the
wikipedia article should be trivially found using a search engine with
this subject and the all-escapes.txt URL looks way too transient.
However, it would make sense to add CONFORMING TO section to the manpage
with the ECMA reference (but probably not the URL).

  * Generally, AUTHOR section is not used for the common manpages.

  * I would move the 'Compatibility notes' subsection to the more
traditional NOTES section, and drop the custom-typeset bulletpoint
list.

  * It is also worth noting that blinking is commonly unimplemented,
with popular alternate implementations being rendering background in
bright color or showing the text in bold.

  * console_codes(4) needs to be adjusted appropriately for this new
manpage at several places, but I think that can be done later.

  * After "There  are several commands to control cursor position, clear
the screen etc.", I would add "See .BR console_codes (4) for detailed
list of all commands." and break the paragraph there.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: suggestion: ANSI color codes manpage

[Leonardo Boiko]

Ok, I think I fixed most of the problems.  A revised version is at
the same URL, http://namakajiri.net/code/ansicolors.7 (beware of
caching).


> It is also worth noting that blinking is commonly unimplemented

Out of curiosity, I did a quick test in Linux:

terminal          bold  italic    underline  blink,s   blink,r  negative
------------------------------------------------------------------------
console           ok    fgcolor   fgcolor    bgcolor   none     ok
console+screen    ok    negative  fgcolor    bgcolor   none     ok
urxvt             ok    ok        ok         ok        slow     ok
urxvt+screen      ok    negative  ok         ok        none     ok
xterm             ok    none      ok         ok        none     ok
kterm             ok    none      ok         bold      none     ok
gnome-terminal    ok    none      ok         none      none     ok
xfce4-terminal    ok    none      ok         none      none     ok
mlterm            ok    none      ok         none      none     ok
Eterm             ok    none      ok         bgcolor+  none     ok
                                             underline

I changed the wording to reflect these results (and removed "blink,
rapid" since it cannot possibly be considered a "common escape
sequence").  The attributes table was getting too cumbersome and hard
to fit in 80 columns, so I moved the information about implementation
fallbacks to NOTES.

I'd like to try the BSD consoles and OSX, but I don't have any
available.  I suppose the manpage would be mostly used by people using
the Linux console or X terminal emulators anyway.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: suggestion: ANSI color codes manpage

[Petr Baudis]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:10:42AM -0300, Leonardo Boiko wrote:
> Ok, I think I fixed most of the problems.  A revised version is at
> the same URL, http://namakajiri.net/code/ansicolors.7 (beware of
> caching).

That looks good!

Could you please prepare a patch based on this file, that also adds
appropriate cross-references especially to console_codes(4) and probably
also to ascii(7)?

Thanks,

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
When I feel like exercising, I just lie down until the feeling
goes away.  -- xed_over
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html