[PATCH] Fancy rc startup style RFC - v6

[Pieter de Goeje]

On Wednesday 19 April 2006 16:39, Eric Anderson wrote:
> Eric Anderson wrote:
> > Eric Anderson wrote:
> >> Bill Vermillion wrote:
> >>> 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.
> >>
> >> Ok. So I've received mass amounts of mail regarding this, and most of
> >> it has been positively in favor of having the option to enable the
> >> rc_fancy, and then an additional option to turn on coloring, with the
> >> default to be non-colored but still rc_fancy="YES" which should work
> >> ok on serial and other terminals (it did for me).
> >>
> >>
> >> I completely agree about all the coloring comments, and terminal
> >> issues.  I personally think it should be an available option, easily
> >> enabled or disabled at will.
> >>
> >> I've put up an updated version, with many changes.  This version
> >> includes optional coloring (with rc_fancy_color="YES" in rc.conf),
> >> better checking, cleaner coding, and no loops.  This version is *much*
> >> more refined than the others - thanks for all the hints everyone!
> >>
> >>
> >> http://www.googlebit.com/freebsd/patches/rc_fancy.patch-5
> >
> > Looks like this version does something strange - from an xterm, the
> > spacing is correct, but from console, it doesn't do anything with the
> > \033[71G in the echo.  I've played with term types, but can't seem to
> > make it act the same under console as it does in an xterm.
> >
> > Anyone know the issue?
>
> Thanks to Rick Petty for pointing me in the right direction (man page!),
> here's the latest, and I think solid patch (for RELENG-6):
>
>
> http://www.googlebit.com/freebsd/patches/rc_fancy.patch-6
>
>
> Eric

Looks really good to me :)

Regards,
Pieter de Goeje