On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Alan Cox wrote:

[Sorry for the slow reply -- I read the list in batches]

| >   to a plain red colour (REDhat, see? :) would help SO MUCH to make
| >   commands and their output become a lot more distiguishable.  Why not
| >   a different colour on every terminal (and pts)?
| 
| There is something user interface people call 'Angry Fruit Salad'. Colour
| in general is bad if overused. Also remember they may be connecting from
| a box with a mono monitor( red looks black and other stuff )

Many years ago, I helped produce a distribution of System V Release 4
for the i386.  We made a change in this area that I thought worked
very well.

It was possible to set the colour of the overscan area of a VGA or EGA
monitor (and possibly CGA -- I don't remember).  The overscan area is
essentially the border of the screen, outside the area of character
cells.  We set the overscan colour for each VT to be distinct.  This
was a very clear visual cue, using an otherwise unexploited resource.
On a mono monitor, users would not get this advantage, but they were
not harmed either.

The IOCTLS to set the overscan colour were mandated by XENIX
compatibility.  I think that they could be accessed by escape
sequences, but my memory is not clear on this.  I haven't seen them
documented in LINUX, but they might be implemented.

Hugh Redelmeier
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  voice: +1 416 482-8253

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