Start-Transcript should have an option to produce color-preserving output

[sba923]

Typical PowerShell script output (especially when debugging, using the various output streams...) is "usefully colorized."

Alas, Start-Transcript only captures a non-formatted, "monochrome" version of the output.

It would be great IMVHO to have the option of generating formatted (RTF and/or HTML) output preserving the colors.

As an example, MobaXterm saves terminal output as RTF, preserving the colors of the emulated terminal's output.

[SteveL-MSFT]

I guess the question is whether you actually want to retain color (which would be ANSI escape sequences) or really just want an easier way to view transcripts? For example, Get-Content could have a transcript mode that colorizes strings starting with DEBUG:, VERBOSE: etc.... Or ConvertTo-Html could also have special logic to understand transcripts and output color.

Transcription currently makes an effort to not preserve color and I'm not sure if preserving the ANSI escape sequences really solves your specific problem as they would only be useful viewed in a terminal that understands ANSI.

[kilasuit]

@SteveL-MSFT perhaps it's time to spit out a Markdown file for the transcript instead of plaintext?

[AlexHimself]

Where did this land?

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has not had any activity in 6 months, if this is a bug please try to reproduce on the latest version of PowerShell and reopen a new issue and reference this issue if this is still a blocker for you.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been marked as "No Activity" as there has been no activity for 6 months. It has been closed for housekeeping purposes.