From: "hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core" <ruby-core@ml.ruby-lang.org>
To: ruby-core@ml.ruby-lang.org
Cc: "hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi)" <noreply@ruby-lang.org>
Subject: [ruby-core:113896] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2023 12:08:48 +0000 (UTC) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <redmine.journal-103548.20230613120848.11268@ruby-lang.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: redmine.issue-18996.20220907222821.11268@ruby-lang.org
Issue #18996 has been updated by hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi).
I opened a PR to restart this discussion:
https://github.com/ruby/reline/pull/552
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-103548
* Author: st0012 (Stan Lo)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
----------------------------------------
### TL;DR
I want to add APIs to `reline` for changing its dialog item's colors.
The APIs I want to add actually have been merged but becaue:
1. This is a design change
2. The maintainer @aycabta is not available to approve nor reject them
I want to raise it here to decide if we should:
1. Drop them
2. Modify them
3. Officiallty accept them
### Background
After version `1.4`, `irb` provides autocompletion support, which is a great feature and has increased many developers' productivity significantly.
But there's an user-experience issue: the completion items' UI colors (set in `reline`) [are not configurable](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/9ab5850444b49aff8e360a84eb1dfa425e96ced1/lib/reline/line_editor.rb#L744-L749). So depending on the user's terminal theme, some may find it hard to use because the background and the text having low-contrast colors, like this:
![](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3303032/148653612-e3dff786-1a10-4923-a0eb-3975cae10a7f.png)
And if that happens, the user has no way to fix it. This caused users to open issues like:
- https://github.com/ruby/irb/issues/351
- https://github.com/ruby/irb/issues/328
for being able to change it.
Some users even decided to disable it completely because the colors are unreadable to them. I have also seen people sharingtips for disabling this feature: [example](https://twitter.com/sdogruyol/status/1538512030449254400). So I believe it may be bothering many developers.
Personally I really like this feature but the background also bothers me:
![Screenshot 2022-09-07 at 22 55 12](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5079556/188990620-5ec7ba0c-97ab-48d6-a51f-fd16315e3631.png)
And that's why I want to improve it by making the colors configurable and potentially also by providing simple light/dark themes from `irb`.
### Proposal
For the dialog UI, there are 2 element states: `highlighted` and `default`. In `irb`'s case, the selected completion candidate will be `highlighted`, and the rest of options will be `default`. And each state has 2 colors: `foreground (text)` and `background (block)`.
This means the `reline` should allow `irb` and/or users to configure:
- Default items' foreground color
- Default items' background color
- Highlighted items' foreground color
- Highlighted items' background color
That brings us to these APIs:
- `Reline.dialog_default_fg_color`
- `Reline.dialog_default_bg_color`
- `Reline.dialog_highlight_fg_color`
- `Reline.dialog_highlight_bg_color`
And because `reline` only supports coloring through ANSI sequences, these APIs only has 8 available colors if we exclude their bright variants:
- Black
- Red
- Green
- Yellow
- Blue
- Magenta
- Cyan
- White
Given the limited options and also to prevent users from entering non-color ANSI sequences, these APIs only take color names directly:
- :black
- :red
- :green
- :yellow
- :blue
- :magenta
- :cyan
- :white
Example:
```rb
Reline.dialog_default_bg_color = :black
puts Reline.dialog_default_bg_color_sequence #=> 40
Reline.dialog_default_fg_color = :white
puts Reline.dialog_default_fg_color_sequence #=> 37
Reline.dialog_highlight_bg_color = :blue
puts Reline.dialog_highlight_bg_color_sequence #=> 34
Reline.dialog_highlight_fg_color = :black
puts Reline.dialog_highlight_fg_color_sequence #=> 30
```
I have made a [proof of concept PR](https://github.com/ruby/irb/pull/380) on `irb` to show what these APIs can achieve if they or similar ones are adopted.
#### Related PRs
The related changes are made through multiple PRs:
- [Initial APIs PR by @pocari](https://github.com/ruby/reline/pull/413)
- [PR to improve the APIs and make them safer to use](https://github.com/ruby/reline/pull/454)
- [PR to rename the APIs](https://github.com/ruby/reline/pull/456)
#### Other Thoughts
This is more of a concern on the `irb` part, but to make the UI looks comfortable, I think it's better to follow these conditions:
1. An item's foreground and background colors should have high contrast with each other so the texts (foreground) are readable.
2. For the `highlighted` item, its background color should be easily distinguishable from the rest of `default` items.
3. When using dark terminal themes, the `default` items' background is better to be dark as well.
---Files--------------------------------
Screenshot 2022-10-18 at 15.25.36.png (9.7 KB)
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-06-13 12:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-09-07 22:28 [ruby-core:109844] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-09-14 13:21 ` [ruby-core:109893] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-09-18 10:55 ` [ruby-core:109947] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-09-22 23:38 ` [ruby-core:110016] " mame (Yusuke Endoh)
2022-09-27 13:22 ` [ruby-core:110107] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-10-06 4:46 ` [ruby-core:110192] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-10-18 15:56 ` [ruby-core:110408] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-10-19 3:37 ` [ruby-core:110416] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-10-31 12:24 ` [ruby-core:110560] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-11-02 4:56 ` [ruby-core:110577] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-11-17 6:16 ` [ruby-core:110788] " hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)
2022-11-29 16:44 ` [ruby-core:111072] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
2023-06-13 12:08 ` hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core [this message]
2023-11-11 9:16 ` [ruby-core:115345] " st0012 (Stan Lo) via ruby-core
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