Solarized schemes shipped in Terminal Preview are incorrect

[TBBle]

Environment

Windows build number: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.175]
Windows Terminal version: Windows Terminal (Preview) 0.2.1715.0

Steps to reproduce

Note: I already had PowerShell and CMD using Solarized Dark in ConHost, via cmd-colors-solarized.

• Install Windows Terminal (Preview)
• Hit Settings
• In the JSON file, change the colorScheme for Powershell and CMD to Solarized Dark.

Expected behavior

The same colours as provided by cmd-colours-solarized, consistent with the main Solarized page screenshots

Actual behavior

The white is too bright. That stood out immediately, so I looked deeper at the pre-defined scheme.

Diagnosis

Comparing the default settings to upstream Solarized The Values and Usage & Development I noted the following differences.

Solarized: Role	Tone	HEX	RGB	Terminal: RGB	HEX	Tone
Dark Foreground	base0	#839496	131_148_150	253_246_227	#FDF6E3	base3
Dark Background	base03	#002b36	0 _43_54	7_54_66	#073642	base02
Light Foreground	base00	#657b83	101_123_131	7_54_66	#073642	base02
Light Background	base3	#fdf6e3	253_246_227	253_246_227	#FDF6E3	base3
Red	red	#dc322f	220_50_47	211_1_2	#D30102	Red (beta1)

The difference in Red is simply that the definition came from an older version of Solarized, and was changed in the 1.0.0beta2 release. This one shows up on the Internet a lot, if you search for #D30102.

The foreground/background differences are a little weird, my guess would be that a modified Light scheme was used (darker font text on the same background) and then some confusion or oversight caused Dark to be defined as 'Light with a swapped FG/BG', leading to an overall-higher brightness from the non-coloured text.

[TBBle]

A 👍 to the team for the "Live update on profile.json save" feature, that made this super-easy to diagnose/test.

[TBBle]

There might be something else fundamentally-odd happening here. Using `Out-Colors.ps`` from cmd-colors-solarized in Terminal:

versus my existing PowerShell setup:

with the following profile:

        {
            "acrylicOpacity" : 0.5,
            "closeOnExit" : true,
            "colorScheme" : "Solarized Dark",
            "commandline" : "powershell.exe",
            "cursorColor" : "#839496",
            "cursorShape" : "bar",
            "fontFace" : "Fira Code Retina",
            "fontSize" : 12,
            "guid" : "{61c54bbd-c2c6-5271-96e7-009a87ff44bf}",
            "historySize" : 9001,
            "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{61c54bbd-c2c6-5271-96e7-009a87ff44bf}.png",
            "name" : "Windows PowerShell",
            "padding" : "0, 0, 0, 0",
            "snapOnInput" : true,
            "startingDirectory" : "%USERPROFILE%",
            "useAcrylic" : false
        },

and scheme

        {
            "background" : "#002B36",
            "black" : "#073642",
            "blue" : "#268BD2",
            "brightBlack" : "#002B36",
            "brightBlue" : "#839496",
            "brightCyan" : "#93A1A1",
            "brightGreen" : "#586E75",
            "brightPurple" : "#6C71C4",
            "brightRed" : "#CB4B16",
            "brightWhite" : "#FDF6E3",
            "brightYellow" : "#657B83",
            "cyan" : "#2AA198",
            "foreground" : "#839496",
            "green" : "#859900",
            "name" : "Solarized Dark",
            "purple" : "#D33682",
            "red" : "#DC322F",
            "white" : "#EEE8D5",
            "yellow" : "#B58900"
        },

It might be an issue in Out-Colors.ps1's name/value mapping, but I'm definitely seeing different PSReadLine colouring results and $HOST.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor etc oddities too.

[DHowett-MSFT]

There’s an outstanding design choice (or issue, depending on how you look at it) where terminal applications cannot emit colors 0 and 7 because they get converted into “background” and “foreground”. This is done for maximum compatibility with existing Windows console applications. It’ll probably be the cause of at least a couple solarized rendering bugs. #293

[TBBle]

That would explain the difference in border for the output. The actual colour difference (dark/light mismatch mostly) is possibly due to the cmd-colours-solarized choice of mappings between ANSI/TERMCOL and PowerShell colours, which are clearly different than how Terminal maps its themes (defined in terms of TERMCOL).

[TBBle]

Confirmed, with the following mapping (simply swapping bright and non-bright), the colours are the same as cmd-colours-solarized:

    {
      "background": "#002B36",
      "brightBlack": "#073642",
      "brightBlue": "#268BD2",
      "black": "#002B36",
      "blue": "#839496",
      "cyan": "#93A1A1",
      "green": "#586E75",
      "purple": "#6C71C4",
      "red": "#CB4B16",
      "white": "#FDF6E3",
      "yellow": "#657B83",
      "brightCyan": "#2AA198",
      "foreground": "#839496",
      "brightGreen": "#859900",
      "name": "Solarized Dark cmd-colors",
      "brightPurple": "#D33682",
      "brightRed": "#DC322F",
      "brightWhite": "#EEE8D5",
      "brightYellow": "#B58900"
    },

Confirmed with the following script, which also checks the ANSI codes.

# Check the mappings per https://github.com/neilpa/cmd-colors-solarized
# in the various ways they can be applied as foreground colours

$Pallet = [ordered]@{
	"base03" = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;30m", "Black")
	"base02" = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;30m", "DarkGray")
	"base01" = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;32m", "DarkGreen")
	"base00" = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;33m", "DarkYellow")
	"base0"  = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;34m", "DarkBlue")
	"base1"  = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;36m", "DarkCyan")
	"base2"  = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;37m", "Gray")
	"base3"  = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;37m", "White")
	"yellow" = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;33m", "Yellow")
	"orange" = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;31m", "DarkRed")
	"red"    = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;31m", "Red")
	"magenta"= [System.Tuple]::Create("1;35m", "Magenta")
	"violet" = [System.Tuple]::Create("0;35m", "DarkMagenta")
	"blue"   = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;34m", "Blue")
	"cyan"   = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;36m", "Cyan")
	"green"  = [System.Tuple]::Create("1;32m", "Green")
}

Write-Host ("{0,-15} | {1,-15} | {2,-15} |" -f "Color", "ANSI", "Write-Host")

$Pallet.keys | `
	ForEach-Object {
		$Color = $_
		$ANSI = $Pallette[$_].Item1
		$HostColour = $Pallette[$_].Item2

		Write-Host ("{0,-15}" -f $Color) -NoNewline
		Write-Host (" | ") -NoNewline
		Write-Host ("{0,-27}" -f "$([char]0x1b)[${ANSI}ESC[${ANSI}$([char]0x1b)[39m" ) -NoNewline
		Write-Host (" | ") -NoNewline
		Write-Host ("{0,-15}" -f $HostColour ) -ForegroundColor $HostColour -NoNewline
		Write-Host (" |")
	}

Write-Host

So really, the colour mismatch is probably a ticket to file against cmd-colors-solarized, to include the relevant pallet in its distribution. A quick look around, e.g. putty-colors-solarized, suggests that mappings for unix-hosted systems are probably consistent with the stock mappings in Terminal, not the cmd-colours-solarized mapping, at least for 8-colours-plus-bold setups.

So none of my comments here are really issues, just the original report's colour issues.

It's all very complex. Hopefully over time Terminal will help make this a bit simpler and more consistent.

[antoineco]

I agree with the two main concerns expressed in the issue description:

• red should be #DC322f
• foreground should be #839496 (base0) for the Dark variant, #657b83 (base00) for the Light variant

as defined at https://github.com/altercation/solarized#the-values

Background colors are also off:

• #002B36 is the correct Dark variant background (base03)
• #FDF6E3 is the correct Light variant background (base3)

Not sure if that's related to #1509 (comment), but I don't think arbitrary foreground and background colors should be chosen.

The resulting scheme should be identical to this:

• Solarized Dark scheme
• Solarized Light scheme

[DHowett-MSFT]

We should fix this.

[DHowett-MSFT]

Thanks for the report! This was just submitted to the store with the v0.2.1831.0 servicing release. It may take some time for the store to process it.

[MorgusLethe]

Hi, thanks for all your work. Just to be clear, what exactly do I have to do to get Solarized Light to look good when I have Debian open? I can't seem to find a quick answer.

I expected that this will happen just by setting Solarized Light as the color scheme, but it does not look good to me, the folder names appear as badly readable lightblue on green background. Is this expected?

[antoineco]

@MorgusLethe that's because the colored output of ls does not have Solarized-friendly colors by default. This can be changed using different "dircolors". Take a look at https://github.com/seebi/dircolors-solarized and pick the dircolors-ansi-light variant.

If you are new to Solarized, you will find out that a few extra terminal configurations like this one are sometimes necessary to display colors correctly (tmux, mutt, git, ...).