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I know there are some people out there with graphic design experience, and some people out there who spend a lot of time looking at text in a terminal window, and even some who are both. I'm looking for a little advice.
See, there's this problem with the default settings for most terminal emulators: the colors suck. I use a black background because I find it more comfortable to look at. There seem to be studies going in both directions on the dark/light background question, so I'd just as soon skip it. Most of the colors are pretty easy to read, but both blue and bright blue on black are a strain.
So I think I want to change the palette for the ANSI colors on the terminal. I've done some research (hoping to find a website which had a bunch of palettes and screen shots of them, honestly, but with no luck) and learned a bit about it, but haven't found anything really satisfactory. I think I'm going to have to roll my own.
From my research, I've come up with a few guidelines for what it should look like which seem reasonable to me. I'd value input on what I'm thinking, as well as color suggestions.
- The ANSI colors are black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and grey, plus a corresponding bright version of each (bright black is dark grey, bright grey is white).
- Ideally, the colors should remain as true to the spec as possible, and should certainly be recognizable as those colors.
- The colors must have sufficient contrast from black to be easily readable when text is <color>/black.
- The colors should be readily distinguished from one another, as they're often used to convey information.
- As often as feasible, the colors should have sufficient contrast with one another to provide readable text. At the very least, bright secondaries should be visible against their dark primary complements.
- I am given to understand that similar perceived brightness reduces fatigue, so ideally the set of dark colors (black excluded) should be about the same perceived brightness, and the set of bright colors (dark grey excluded) should be about the same perceived brightness. I am currently looking at the W3C accessibility standard of perceived brightness, but am open to alternatives. I'm really not sure I trust the numbers I'm getting out of this. (Blue is really dark, but is it that really dark?
- Perhaps as a result of blue being so very dark, many colors are impressively readable against it as a background, which is kind of useful. It would be nifty to be able to preserve that, though I'd accept if that's not possible.
It recently occurred to me to fiddle with my monitor brightness/contrast/whatever settings. On my work monitor, dialing contrast to max seems to make the blues more visible, but I don't know what those settings really do. Is this a good approach, or is it going to be counterproductive?
Something really needs to be done. 0x0000ff:0x000000 is only readable if I work really hard at it, and blue doesn't go any brighter without becoming less blue.
