[PATCH] Fancy rc startup style RFC

[Bill Vermillion]

Somewhere around Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 04:07 , the world stopped
and listened as freebsd-hackers-request at freebsd.org graced us with
this profound tidbit of wisdom that would fulfill the enjoyment of
future generations:

> Message: 20
> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:07:31 -0700
> From: Darren Pilgrim <darren.pilgrim at bitfreak.org>

> Eric Anderson wrote:

>  > If I could figure out how to make sh do colors, I'd do it. :)

> Please do not use colors in rc. Escape-sequenced colors make
> unacceptable assumptions about the user and syslogd strips
> escape sequences anyway, so it would be of no use to logged
> consoles. Serial consoles introduce other problems with buggy
> escape handling in third-party terminal programs. A good text
> layout and descriptive status messages do far more for clarity
> and readability than any use of color ever can.

Let me add to that.  About 10% of the male population has some
color vision problem.  Mine is a bit more than others.   Everytime
I get called to work on a Linux system, I have to go in and disable
the colors as the reds and other colors become very hard to see
against a dark background.   The problem is the luminance value of
colors such a red is quite low compared to others.  That's one of
the reasons why fire-trucks in this area are lime-green, as red
trucks disappear into the blackness at night.

If you add color make sure it is a user selectable option
and not turned on by default.   IMO everything you need to admin a
system needs to be able to run on something as lowly as a pure
serial terminal as the above poster notes.

Bill


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com