color for 386/ix

[David G. Burton]

In article <1990Mar5.125403.10941 at virtech.uucp> cpcahil at virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
|In article <511241 at nstar.UUCP> larry at nstar.UUCP (Larry Snyder) writes:
|:I received a "setcolor" utility for 386 unix and it works until 
|:I bring up vi - in which case the console is reset to white on 
|:black.
|
|This can be fixed by modifying the terminfo definition for AT386 (or whatever
|you are using for your terminal type).  I believe the parameter is something
|like initc for "initialize color", but I'm not positive. You should
|add in the sequence to set the appropriate color for initc.  You might 
|want to have several AT386-xx entries for each color path and set up your
|setcolor utility as a shell function which will change your TERM environment
|variable to match the color settings.  Review the terminfo(4) man page
|for more information.

I rather prefer the XENIX approach to this: setcolor(1) defines the color
"set" used by all applications (unless they specifically override). This
includes the shell, vi, more, and many applications that presume a
black-and-white environment. Advantages:

. don't need to modify the termcap/terminfo descriptions
. can be set independently by each user to individual preferences,
	without resorting to AT386_DAVEB, AT386_SANDY, etc.
. it seems to change the definitions of "white" and "reverse" to
	whatever is defined, thus it works with any application that
	tries to set the screen color to "white" or "reverse".

One disadvantage resulting from the "redefinition" is that applications
that really do want/need white can't get it, and the redefined colors
may interfere with colors used by applications to distinguish objects
(e.g. word processors to indicate bold text). Also, this requires driver
support, so that \E]0m (or whatever) doesn't give the default white.
--
Dave Burton
uunet!ism780c!laidbak!daveb