[PATCH] Fancy rc startup style RFC

[Eric Anderson]

Bill Vermillion wrote:
> While stranded on the shoulder of the Information
> Superhiway and trying to flag down some passing bytes
> freebsd-hackers-request at freebsd.org said "Bits don't fail me now",
> and continued with:
> 
>> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:03:57 -0400
>> From: "Coleman Kane" <zombyfork at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fancy rc startup style RFC
> 
>> On 4/19/06, Mike Meyer <mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers.102a7e at mired.org> wrote:
> 
>>> In
>>> <346a80220604190900i3bfc3b54v93a4c6c30f0dfc4f at mail.gmail.com>,
>>> Coleman Kane <zombyfork at gmail.com> typed:
> 
>>>> On 4/19/06, Mike Meyer
>>>> <mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers.102a7e at mired.org  wrote:
> 
>>>> How about we all discuss good choices for "default" colors?
> 
>>> Depends on the goal: do you want the default to work for
>>> everyone, or do you want the default to be prettier and/or
>>> better for most people but absolutely suck for a few?
> 
>> I was thinking perhaps of having a predefined set of templates
>> (with the option and documentation to add your own). Perhaps
>> implement one that creates the "traffic-light" style that seems
>> to make intuitive sense to many americans (Bold Red: error, Bold
>> Green: Success, Bold Yellow: warning/notice), and also have
>> another perdefined one that uses a different color set.
> 
> "Traffic-light" style is also designed to be useable by completely
> color-blind people - which is rare.  By that if you notice traffic
> lights are always in the same order, green, yellow, red so that all
> you have to do is be able to see the luminance value in the
> abscence of any chroma information..
> 
> That's the problem with web-sites which depend on chroma value, and
> often have colors which are easily discernable by normally sighted
> people, but the luminance is very close which can make things
> almost invisible.
> 
> I have a noticed a traffic-sign problem which another person also
> wrote to the local newspaper - and the traffic division is looking
> to change the signs.
> 
> In Florida bright days are indeed very bright.  There are signs
> that use lights to spell out the message with what someone feels
> the most important part in 'red'. The signs have a black
> background.
> 
> On a bright day I see  "NO TURN ON "  or "TO PEDS"   as 
> the word RED in the first message is invisible to me, and 
> the YIELD in the second has the same effect.
> 
> There is also a sign that I came up to that used the universal
> sign for turn.  I started to turn and my wife had me stop because
> the circle with bar through it was in RED and I could not see it.
> 
> On overcast days or at night these signs are easily viewable.
> 
> For those of you who remember the late 1980s when IBM came out with
> OS/2 and MS came out with a new Windows, the complaints were the
> default screens on OS/2 were drab while the Windows had bright
> colors.  IBM is very good at designing things for people with
> disabilites and the OS/2 default screen was designed to be readable
> by someone with total color-blindness - which as I said is rare.
> 
> The way to check if a web-site is readable by all it to use
> a monochrome monitor [ exceedingly hard to find nowdays ], and 
> at least some government sites are now required to be that way.
> 
> Color can be a great way to emphasize items >IF< the chroma
> and luminance values are carefully chosen.  If not you can take
> away a lot of functionality.

Bill - thanks for all the info here.  I feel it's important for this to 
work for users with all kinds of vision differences, so can you confirm 
(or not) whether the b/w version (rc_fancy="YES", but 
rc_fancy_color="NO") looks readable to you? (please use patch 7)

Thanks!
Eric



-- 
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Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
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