On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 05:11:55PM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 03:13:20PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > I have just bought an Android tablet to use in preference to my
> > Android smartphone. I am trying to get colours to work in vile on the
> > new tablet but I'm failing at the moment.
>
> hmm - I don't have something like that, for testing.
> But I can make guesses :-)
>
Yes, I realise it's a bit of a 'niche' use! :-)
> > Both have vile 9.8z installed. I have (I think!) copied all the vile
> > configuration files across from the old one (where syntax
> > highlighting works) to the new one (where it doesn't).
> >
> > They have virtually identical .profile and .bashrc, they have
> > identical .vile.keywords and .vilerc files. Directory colouring works
> > OK on the new one but I can't get any colour within vile on the new
> > one.
> >
> > I have tried running the syntax highlighting commands manually by
> > doing the following line by line in the new device:-
> >
> > source filters.rc
> > setv $autocolor-hook HighlightFilter
> > setv $read-hook HighlightFilter
> > set autocolor=500
> > set bcolor=default
>
> running "vile -D" will turn on the trace feature. You might see some
> issue in the [Trace] buffer, i.e., not reading one of the scripts.
>
I've done that and I couldn't see anything significantly wrong, just a
few mild warnings about tests comparing different types of variable.
There were no configuration files that couldn't be read.
> The [Variables] display would show how vile is compile-time configured.
> For instance, I have (among other settings):
>
> $cfgopts = hypertext,locale,iconv,multibyte,perl,terminfo
> $filter-list = c key m4 perl raku ruby sed tags ada as asm au3 awk basic
> bat bnf cfg conf css cweb dcl def diff ecl erl esql est fdl hs html imake
> info ini iss json latex lex lisp lua mail mailcap make mcrl md midl mms
> nmake nr pas php pot ps ps1 py rc rcs rexx rpm rtf rust sccs scheme sh
> sml spell sql tbl tc tcl texi ti tpu txt vile vlog wbt xml xq xres xs yacc
> yaml
> $startup-file = .vilerc
> $startup-path = /usr/share/vile
>
> If it's listing "terminfo", "termcap" or curses in $cfgopts, then it could
> be using ncurses.
>
The $cfgopts variable is the same on both systems:-
$cfgopts = hypertext,locale,multibyte,terminfo
Running diff to compare the whole of the output of
show-system-variables just produces:-
chris$ diff bisonvars m986vars
61c61
< $lastkey = 10
---
> $lastkey = 32
89c89
< $pid = 5707
---
> $pid = 15143
103c103
< $status = TRUE
---
> $status = FALSE
115c115
< $wlines = 52
---
> $wlines = 14
(The old phone is an Umidigi Bison, the new tablet is an m986, main
stream I am not! :-) )
> > No errors are reported but there's no colours.
>
> It might be simply a missing terminal description. "directory colors" aren't
> helpful since (referring to dircolors and such) it's mostly hardcoded
> (i.e., with little relationship to ncurses).
>
Both systems have TERM set to 'xterm' and as far as I can see the
terminfo files are identical.
If I ssh **from** the m986 tablet to another system and run vile on
the other system using the tablet screen then I do get colours. The
other way around, ssh **to** the m986 and run vile displaying on the
other system's screen then I don't get colours. So it is just vile on
the m986 system which is colourless.
It's not a big deal, I'm not really aiming to do heavy program editing
on the tablet, it's just mildly annoying.
Thanks for your ideas and time.
--
Chris Green
