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Re: Colored output


From: Akim Demaille
Subject: Re: Colored output
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2019 19:46:30 +0100

Hi Bruno,

> Le 27 janv. 2019 à 18:39, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> a écrit :
> 
> Hi Akim,
> 
>> I'd like to have colored diagnostics in Bison, I do feel on occasion it would
>> make it easier to spot errors and warnings for instance.
>> 
>> AFAICT, gnulib does not feature any module to help do this.  Coreutils (ls)
>> and GCC (maybe diffutils too) are probably good sources of inspiration, but
>> am I missing something?  Should I look elsewhere first?  Would a gnulib 
>> module
>> make sense?
> 
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> There are two approaches to decide which colors to produce:
>  (A) In a first step, produce output without colors. In a second step,
>      add the colors, usually through regular expressions.
>  (B) Add the colors directly when you produce the output, through interleaved
>      statements that turn on or off specific attributes.
> 
> I believe that (A) is good for log files, whereas (B) is preferrable for
> more complex syntax, such as JSON, XML, or programming language text.

Yes, I was clearly aiming at (B).

> There are three approaches to defining the colors and attributes for specific
> syntactic roles:
>  (I) Hard code the escape sequences in the program.
>  (II) Let the user specify terminal-dependent escape sequences, e.g. through
>       an environment variable using an obscure syntax, or through a
>       configuration file.
>  (III) Let the user specify colors and attributes through a CSS file, and
>        let the program translate these colors and attribute specifications
>        to the terminal-dependent escape sequences.

I was thinking about (II), and would never have thought about (III)
unless I was aware of the existence of a library providing supports
for CSS on a terminal output.

> The advantages of (III), compared to (II), are:
>  - The specification is terminal independent.
>  - Easier to change for the user.
> 
> (II) is the approach used by the coreutils for 'ls', with a helper program
>     called 'dircolors'. [1][2][3]
>     Likewise for 'diff' ([4], option '--palette').
> (III) is the approach used by GNU gettext for 'msgcat' and friends [5], and
>      by GNU source-highlight [6]. No helper program is needed.

Amazing...


> If you want the combination of (B) and (III):

Well, I was going for B.II, but now that you teased me with B.III, I can't
wait for it!

> I'm in the process of extracting
> the color and style code from GNU gettext into a library 'libtextstyle'. You
> can get an impression of it and how it can be used by looking at these links:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/The-_002d_002dcolor-option.html
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/The-TERM-variable.html
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/The-_002d_002dstyle-option.html
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob_plain;f=gettext-tools/styles/po-default.css;hb=HEAD
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob_plain;f=gettext-tools/styles/po-vim.css;hb=HEAD
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob;f=gettext-tools/src/color.h
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob;f=gettext-tools/src/write-po.c
> lines 156..226, 449..514.
> But it's not ready yet.

It looks very promising!

Thanks!


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