Changing color output of emerge Use=

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Faraclas · Post by **Faraclas** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 4:34 pm

The list of use flags shown in USE="flag -flag" are output with flag in red and -flag in dark blue. I have a dark terminal and cant read the dark blue at all. My life would be significantly better if I could change this. I looked at the https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/color.map but it doesnt seem to list the USE flags shown. Any ideas how to change this?

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 4:48 pm

Since colors are generated by the terminal emulator I'd more look into changing the terminal emulator color scheme. There's no guarantee all portage tools use the same config file - I suspect some are hardcoded - so it's difficult to guarantee a way to fix this.

First off, which tool is not responding to color settings? qlop? emerge? equery? And what exactly (post a sample line of text with context and indicate where it's poorly colored, or a screen shot?)

Most importantly, what terminal emulator are you using? I ended up changing the color profile for xfce4-terminal due to this issue as other software that doesn't have config are bound to show up...

Faraclas · Post by **Faraclas** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:37 pm

I am using the gnome terminal with system-wide dark theme. I did change the colors for both my regular and root users so that the folders / paths / etc look readable.

Here is a screenshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ks4M9D ... sp=sharing

The dark blue is pretty illegible here. When I am trying to figure out blocking packages etc, this same dark blue is also used and I cant really read it either.[/url]

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:51 pm

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... t-in-linux response 11

I did that long ago. IIRC the change is in /etc/DIR_COLORS. I changed to cyan which is jarring but MUCH more visible than dark blue! I have presbyopia.

Post by **Ionen** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 6:09 pm

As mentioned already should adjust your terminal emulator itself, I did not change any portage settings yet emerge colors look like this (with xfce4-terminal, being vte-based it's near-identical to gnome-terminal).

Faraclas · Post by **Faraclas** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 6:21 pm

Thanks guys, and Ionen

Changing the dark blue to a lighter one in the terminal emulator solved it!

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:42 am

Also depends on your monitor, if your monitor's contrast ratio is not great or you have a lot of glare, more reasons they can't be seen. Changing the gamma on your monitor is an option though it'd affect all colors... and thus terminal emulator color mapping is still the best solution.

I don't recall having an issue with dark blue until I started using LCDs. Was never a problem on most CRT displays :o

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:25 am

eccerr0r wrote:I don't recall having an issue with dark blue until I started using LCDs. Was never a problem on most CRT displays

For sure!

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:28 am

Another one here for "can't see blue". I've got two monitors, one a professional IPS, and the default dark blue is nigh impossible to read on both of them. Really bad idea to use that as a foreground text colour.

Post by **Ionen** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 1:48 pm

Ant P. wrote:Another one here for "can't see blue". I've got two monitors, one a professional IPS, and the default dark blue is nigh impossible to read on both of them. Really bad idea to use that as a foreground text colour.

Do you mean bad idea for portage or the terminal emulator? Colors look fine if you run emerge on a normal /dev/tty (kinda similar to my earlier screenshot assuming that's not still too dark), being too dark just comes down to the terminal emulator using bad foreground colors for the used background.

Edit: In my case xfce4-terminal is auto-setting those colors, but if I launch urxvt and set _only_ the background to something dark then I'll have the same problem.

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:48 pm

Ionen wrote: Colors look fine if you run emerge on a normal /dev/tty

Depends on your eyesight. If you are color blind or have macular degeneration - not so fine. In fact, hard to read even with your eyes one inch from the screen.

Post by **Ionen** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:51 pm

Tony0945 wrote:Depends on your eyesight.

Yeah that's why I said "assuming that's not still too dark", but in these situations it's hard to tell which colors are okay at all as it'll depend on people, don't believe limited to blue. Nothing too special but have poor vision myself (things look fine when I'm very close, but any distance makes light appears to refract outward making it hard to read anything even with large text).

Point was just that the "dark blue" on a badly setup terminal emulator will likely make most people uncomfortable regardless (and that's not portage's fault, fix the terminal), while /dev/tty's default colors are reasonable.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:22 pm

And yes keep in mind that human eyes are not as sensitive to blue as to other colors, so any eyesight issues amplify it. However the color choices in the terminal/terminal emulator are not great due to LCDs tending not to have as good contrast ratios to CRTs doesn't help. IPS displays should be better, but even on these, black isn't as black as CRTs, making dark blue difficult to see.

I can't get myself to use a white background even if it's marginally more power efficient, specifically due to being from the CRT ages :-( gosh that dates me ...

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:16 pm

Ionen wrote:Point was just that the "dark blue" on a badly setup terminal emulator will likely make most people uncomfortable regardless (and that's not portage's fault, fix the terminal), while /dev/tty's default colors are reasonable.

They didn't bother me in the past, but my eyes have deteriorated a lot in the last three years.

eccerr0r wrote:I can't get myself to use a white background even if it's marginally more power efficient, specifically due to being from the CRT ages gosh that dates me ...

Hah! CRT should be green!

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:15 pm

And the audacity for companies to make(?)/use(Tektronix?) blue phosphor CRTs...

Alas white is my CRT color of choice, same as when televisions were monochrome. Never could get into green and amber, and especially long persistence phosphors trying to hide low refresh rates...

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pm

eccerr0r wrote:Never could get into green and amber, and especially long persistence phosphors trying to hide low refresh rates...

Amber is for night vision. Not sure why the original tubes were green. maybe that was the only phosphor they knew of.

VinzC · Post by **VinzC** » Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:13 pm

Sorry for jumping in but that's exactly the topic I was looking for, i.e. colours portage uses. While I have no difficulty for reading directories in a relatively dark blue (i.e. directories), the one used for packages that "blocks" is almost invisible on a black background, more precisely on a TTY (it's fine in an X window). Can this colour be changed at all?

Leonardo.b · Post by **Leonardo.b** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 8:08 pm

I have this line inside /etc/portage/color.map

Code: Select all

darkblue = fuchsia

I read an example iside the man page for color.map.

I don't know if it matters; my english is poor and my skills worst.

VinzC · Post by **VinzC** » Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:05 am

Leonardo.b wrote:I have this line inside /etc/portage/color.map
Code: Select all
darkblue = fuchsia
I read an example iside the man page for color.map.

Awesome! Thanks a lot, Leonardo.b.