set_color --print-colors always bold

[plgruener]

fish --version : current git build (3.2.0-44-g4218c1f1a-dirty)
OS: ArchLinux, terminals: all

Problem: set_color --print-colors outputs every named color (except 'normal') in bold, even the non-br-ones. For colorschemes that define dedicated "bright" colors, this is inaccurate. It also means that the --dim switch does not work (it gets converted to bold+dim = bold font, but in normal color).

I patched builtin_set_colors.cpp to print the escape sequences to pipes/files, this yields:

$set_color --print-colors | string escape
\e\[1m\e\[30mblack
\e\[1m\e\[34mblue
\e\[1m\e\[90mbrblack
\e\[1m\e\[94mbrblue
\e\[1m\e\[96mbrcyan
\e\[1m\e\[92mbrgreen
\e\[1m\e\[95mbrmagenta
\e\[1m\e\[91mbrred
\e\[1m\e\[97mbrwhite
\e\[1m\e\[93mbryellow
\e\[1m\e\[36mcyan
\e\[1m\e\[32mgreen
\e\[1m\e\[35mmagenta
\e\[1m\e\[31mred
\e\[1m\e\[37mwhite
\e\[1m\e\[33myellow
\e\[1m\e\[30m\e\(B\e\[mnormal

and

$ set_color --print-colors --dim | string escape
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[30mblack
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[34mblue
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[90mbrblack
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[94mbrblue
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[96mbrcyan
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[92mbrgreen
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[95mbrmagenta
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[91mbrred
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[97mbrwhite
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[93mbryellow
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[36mcyan
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[32mgreen
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[35mmagenta
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[31mred
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[37mwhite
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[33myellow
\e\[2m\e\[1m\e\[30m\e\(B\e\[mnormal

(edit: changed od -c to string escape)

This confirms it's not an issue with my terminal config, but fish sending wrong escape codes.

(Note: I had a quick glance at the code, but couldn't fix the issue myself. But I saw a comment in output.cpp that bold mode is always entered for readability reasons, that might be related?)

[faho]

Ah, okay.

What happens here is that fish has a special case where it'll enable bold mode whenever the background is on "to make reading easier". That's pretty dubious to begin with, but removing it is probably a bigger change.

set_color runs into this because it sets a background color of "none". Fix incoming.

[faho]

Also as a sidenote:

$ set_color --print-colors | od -c

od is super chatty and fills the entire screen with very little information here. Use string escape in its place and you'll get much more compact output. For example:

> set_color yellow | string escape
\e\[33m

[plgruener]

Thanks for the quick fix.

Ah, string escape is certainly much nicer than od, thanks for the tip. Is there any way to display the escape sequences without patching fish first? (As far as I could tell they are always omitted if output is to a pipe or file.)

[faho]

Is there any way to display the escape sequences without patching fish first?

set_color --print-colors specifically won't do it if it's not connected to a terminal.

I suppose you could use expect or similar to connect it to a fake one (e.g. like our tests do). Other than that, no.