Re: [F.A.Q.] the advantages of a shared tool/kernel Git repository, tools/perf/ and tools/kvm/

Jim Paris
2011-11-09T19:34:04Z

Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> Em Wed, Nov 09, 2011 at 11:40:01AM +0100, Gerd Hoffmann escreveu:
> > Hi,
> >
> > > What we want to have is to have a set of distinctive colors - just
> > > two (background, foreground) colors are not enough - we also need
> > > colors to highlight certain information - we need 5-6 colors for the
> > > output to be maximally expressive. Is there a canonical way to handle
> > > that while still adapting to user preferences automatically by taking
> > > background/foreground color scheme of the xterm into account?
> >
> > > I suspect to fix the worst of the fallout we could add some logic to
> > > detect low contrast combinations (too low color distance) and fall
> > > back to the foreground/background colors in that case.
> >
> > As far I know it is pretty much impossible to figure the
> > foreground/background colors of the terminal you are running on. You
>
> Glad to hear that, I thought I hadn't researched that much (I did). Hope
> somebody appears and tell us how it is done :-)

In xterm, '\e]10;?\e\\' and '\e]11;?\e\\' will report the colors, e.g.:

#!/bin/bash
read -s -r -d \\ -p `printf '\e]10;?\e\\'` -t 1 fg
[ $? -ne 0 ] && fg="no response"
echo "foreground: $fg" | cat -v
read -s -r -d \\ -p `printf '\e]11;?\e\\'` -t 1 bg
[ $? -ne 0 ] && bg="no response"
echo "background: $bg" | cat -v

-jim