alt Hacker NewsI had exactly this thought!
Though, I have a problem with even just the basic 16 colours:
black red green yellow blue magenta cyan white bright black bright red bright green bright yellow bright blue bright magenta bright cyan bright white
~~~
Many themes take `black` to mean `black` and `white` to mean `white`. How is it supposed to work when one switches the theme between the dark and the light version?
What are `black`, `white`, `bright black`, and `bright white` supposed mean?
I take those as meaning (in order): `almost invisible on current terminal background`, `pretty contrasty`, `visible but not contrasty`, and `the contrastiest`.
I wish the colour names reflected that, instead of `black` and `white`: you usually care about the contrast, not about the precise colour.
Replies
Unless you provide a way to configure the colors, it’s better to simply rely on bold, reverse, and standout. If you using the 16p, don’t use black and white unless you know ehat the background is, and use the others sparingly and semantically (no rainbow soup). If you’re going for 256p, it should be in a theme engine that’s user configurable.
The way it's supposed to work is you don't touch the terminal colors but instead configure the program to use different colors. So you don't invert black for a dark theme, instead the program uses white instead of black.
By the way, the terminal foreground and background colors are independent of the standard 16 colors, which complicates things.