Re: RFC: comint.el - comint-highlight-prompt and unreadable colors

[Miles Bader]

address@hidden (Jari Aalto+mail.emacs) writes:
> Was it "... should customize `frame-background-mode' to match his
> environment."
>
> Should this problem be left to every putty (or dark background term)
> user? I understood that the the code doesn't get enough information to
> decide the correct dark/light environment in presented cases. So it
> might guesses wrong, and the results are pretty bad with the select
> default color.

Basically, unless you have a proper frame-background-mode, then _all_
the highlighting in Emacs will be fairly screwed up:  a large percentage
of the colors used in Emacs highlighting only look good against the
proper background type.  Attempting to pick "neutral" faces for
everything simply doesn't work -- it's hard enough making things look
good if you _can_ depend on the background type -- and the problem is
even worse on ttys with their limited selection of color and alternate
font styles (basically only bold, and often not even that, works).

So even if we changed the comint prompt to make you happy, the entire
rest of the interface will still look awful.

If you can find a way to detect Putty/rxvt then Emacs could use that
information, but absent that, I don't think there's any choice but user
education.

> Do you have in use cases where 'bold would not work?

Bold is already used in comint.  But for the real problem, see above.

-miles

-- 
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  [George Carlin]