* [ruby-core:109893] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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 ` k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-09-18 10:55 ` [ruby-core:109947] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
` (11 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) @ 2022-09-14 13:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun).
> Some users even decided to disable it completely because the colors are unreadable to them. I have also seen people sharing tips for disabling this feature: [example](https://twitter.com/sdogruyol/status/1538512030449254400).
JFYI, I'm one of the people who are disabling IRB completion, but it was not because I can't configure colors but because the prompt position moves a lot depending on the size of the completion window. If we are interested in addressing the problem you described, we should check if the default color is the primary reason to disable it. It's unclear from the example tweet alone whether the author was annoyed by the color or not.
> That brings us to these APIs
I agree with making those four things configurable. Supporting only ANSI escape sequences for now makes sense too. I don't have a strong preference on Reline-level APIs, but these APIs look okay.
> 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.
Unlike Reline's API, I have a few thoughts on how IRB should be configured, but it's not the scope of this ticket. So I'll discuss it elsewhere :)
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99136
* 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:
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:
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.
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:109947] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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 ` st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-09-22 23:38 ` [ruby-core:110016] " mame (Yusuke Endoh)
` (10 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) @ 2022-09-18 10:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) wrote in #note-1:
> JFYI, I'm one of the people who are disabling IRB completion, but it was not because I can't configure colors but because the prompt position moves a lot depending on the size of the completion window. If we are interested in addressing the problem you described, we should check if the default color is the primary reason for those people to disable it. It's unclear from the example tweet alone whether the author was annoyed by the color or not.
Based on the screenshot of [that tweet](https://twitter.com/sdogruyol/status/1538512030449254400), I believe the coloring issue is implied.
But even if we excluded that one, coloring is also mentioned in the issues I included. Here are some quotes from their comments:
> The autocomplete list is shown in color and cannot be read at all if the environment and desktop colors are set in a different way
> And the autocomplete is a bright cyan bg color that is completely unreadable.
> When starting IRB in Ruby 3.1, autocomplete suggestions are shown but hard to read due to the default background color. Ideally, the default background color settings would ensure enough contrast to make the text legible.
And here are other tweets complaining about irb coloring:
https://twitter.com/mtabetz/status/1571378786700087297 (posted just a few hours before this comment)
https://twitter.com/ryanmammina/status/1474764022524297219
I'm not saying it's the only reason people disable the autocompletion feature. I also heard people disabling it because it slows SSH connection down for example.
But from my personal experience (as mentioned with a screenshot earlier) and the reactions I've seen on Twitter or Ruby community spaces (private Slack...etc.), background color is definitely one thing we can and should improve.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99196
* 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:
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:
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.
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110016] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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 ` mame (Yusuke Endoh)
2022-09-27 13:22 ` [ruby-core:110107] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
` (9 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: mame (Yusuke Endoh) @ 2022-09-22 23:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh).
Discussed at the dev meeting. For the API style, how about `Reline.color_config` with a hash object like this?
```ruby
Reline.color_config.merge!({
dialog_default_bg_color: :white,
dialog_default_fg_color: :black,
dialog_highlight_bg_color: :white,
dialog_highlight_fg_color: :black,
})
```
Note that we may want to add settings in future (e.g., more attributes like italic, bold, etc). We will need to add more methods for each additional setting if we choose a style of `Reline.dialog_default_bg_color = :white`.
Also, how did you choose the names "default", "highlight", "bg_color", etc.? It would be good to clarify the rationale.
For example, Terminal.app uses the term "selection" instead of "highlight".
[The article of Wikipedia "ANSI escape code"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code) says "Set background color" instead of "bg_color". (It would be better to find the original source of ANSI escape code instead of the Wikipedia article.)
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99267
* 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:
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:
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.
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110107] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2022-09-22 23:38 ` [ruby-core:110016] " mame (Yusuke Endoh)
@ 2022-09-27 13:22 ` st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-10-06 4:46 ` [ruby-core:110192] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
` (8 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) @ 2022-09-27 13:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
> It would be better to find the original source of ANSI escape code instead of the Wikipedia article.
The 8-color part of ANSI escape code (not the entire standard) were defined in the [ECMA-48 standard](https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-48_5th_edition_june_1991.pdf) 's page 62. (This standard later became ISO-6429)
In the standard, it uses `[color] display` to refer to foreground colors, and `[color] background` for background colors. However, it's worth noting that in other terminal related documents, like the wiki page I linked above or [this Console Virtual Terminal Sequences manual from Microsoft](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-virtual-terminal-sequences#text-formatting), `foreground` and `background` are the more common terms.
So I think we should stick with `foreground` and `background` as `display` is more ambiguous.
**`bg_color` or `background_color`**
I'm fine with both the longer `foreground_color` and `background_color` or the short versions like `fg_color` and `bg_color`.
### New Configuration Interface
After reading the feedback and doing more research, I want to propose a new configuration interface:
```rb
Reline.dialog_config.merge!({
background_color: :black,
foreground_color: :white,
highlighted_background_color: :white,
highlighted_foreground_color: :black,
# and in the future, if we want to introduce more styles
text_style: [:italic, :underscore],
highlighted_text_style: [:bold],
})
```
**Why `dialog_config` instead of `color_config`**
When it comes to UI configurations, I think it makes more sense to group the options by the component (dialog) than the type of property (color). For example, when defining CSS we declare a selector's styles (background, font...etc.) in the same block.
```
.dropdown-content {
position: absolute;
background-color: #f9f9f9;
min-width: 160px;
box-shadow: 0px 8px 16px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
padding: 12px 16px;
z-index: 1;
}
```
This also means that we don't need to have the component prefix (`dialog_`) in every option.
**Item states: `highlighted` vs `selection`**
`reline`'s' dialog can have 2 types of usages:
1. Dropdown selection, like `irb`'s autocompletion
2. Content display, like `irb`'s documentation dialog
The difference is not well documented but the behavior is controlled by the dialog's [`pointer` attribute](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/aeead48f1c/lib/reline/line_editor.rb#L685). If it's assigned to an integer that matches one of the items' index, [the item will be highlighted](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/aeead48f1c/lib/reline/line_editor.rb#L745) (scenario 1). If it's assigned with a `nil`, then all contents will be displayed the same way (scenario 2).
Given that `reline`'s dialog isn't just for autocompletion dropdown, I think using `selection` as a state name is too narrow. And purpose of `pointer` is to display a specific content with different set of color(s), so I think `highlighted` is a better name here.
#### The Current (`v0.3.1`) Implementation's `bg_color`
I forgot to mention that in `reline v0.3.1`, there's already a way to configure a dialog's background color by [passing `bg_color` to `DialogRenderInfo`](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/v0.3.1/lib/reline.rb#L36). And `irb` is already using it to [set its documentation dialog's background color](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/4192683ba27b6c25f709f682136b664cf6d0bc2a/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L410).
However, I think it's not the API we should settle with. Let me explain why:
To build a `reline` dialog, there are 2 levels of APIs to use. The lowest level is to build a proc that handles the dialog logic (which needs to returns a `DialogRenderInfo`), and use the [`add_dialog_proc` method](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/aeead48f1cdffbb0d5ca392ac13a7d5a7b9a3f88/lib/reline.rb#L183-L187) to register it. This is what `irb`'s [documentation dialog](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/4192683ba27b6c25f709f682136b664cf6d0bc2a/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L299) uses (the complete [`SHOW_DOC_DIALOG` proc](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/4192683ba27b6c25f709f682136b664cf6d0bc2a/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L315-L411)). And the `bg_color` attribute is only accessible at this level.
And on top of that, `reline` provides a default dialog proc for autocompletion ([`DEFAULT_DIALOG_PROC_AUTOCOMPLETE`](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/aeead48f1cdffbb0d5ca392ac13a7d5a7b9a3f88/lib/reline.rb#L234-L280)). In this case, the user only needs to [generate content candidates in a proc](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/4192683ba27b6c25f709f682136b664cf6d0bc2a/lib/irb/completion.rb#L126-L136), and register it with `Reline.completion_proc` ([example from `irb`](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/4192683ba27b6c25f709f682136b664cf6d0bc2a/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L284)). And since this approach doesn't build a `DialogRenderInfo` from ground up, it won't be able to configure `bg_color`. So even if we add a `fg_color` to the `DialogRenderInfo` struct, we still won't be able to configure it from `irb`.
Therefore, I think the proposed configuration interface is still necessary.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99365
* 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:
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:
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.
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110192] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (3 preceding siblings ...)
2022-09-27 13:22 ` [ruby-core:110107] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
@ 2022-10-06 4:46 ` k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-10-18 15:56 ` [ruby-core:110408] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
` (7 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) @ 2022-10-06 4:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun).
### Naming Convention
Looking at #note-3, the last dev-meeting's primary ask was to provide a rationale for naming the configurations. So far, the following things have been mentioned:
* [ECMA-48 standard](https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-48_5th_edition_june_1991.pdf)
* [ANSI escape code - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code)
* [Console Virtual Terminal Sequences - Windows Terminal](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-virtual-terminal-sequences#text-formatting)
* Terminal.app
It seems like #note-4 discussed individual configurations with different reasoning, however, because the concern is about additional future settings, we should choose a consistent way to name them if possible.
My two cents: Given that these configurations are tightly coupled with terminal applications, I think it should be consistent with the names used in terminal applications, at least for concepts that exist in terminal apps, e.g. `foreground`, `background`. For concepts that don't exist in terminal apps, we could use what Reline names, e.g. `dialog`, or carefully pick an arbitrary name that makes the most sense as a last resort.
### Completion vs Documentation
[Feature #19010] suggested the possibility that, if we were to introduce a color theme to IRB, we'd like to configure colors of other things such as syntax highlight as well. When a color theme can specify different colors for different components, we might want to use different colors for completion and documentation in the future.
If completion and documentation are implemented differently by `SHOW_DOC_DIALOG` and `DEFAULT_DIALOG_PROC_AUTOCOMPLETE`, why don't you just separate color configs for those two things? If you introduce only a color config for auto-completion, which is the actual scope of the problem discussed in this ticket in the first place, for the place of `highlighted`, you'll be able to comfortably use a name that is consistent with terminal apps, `selection`.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99467
* 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:
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:
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.
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110408] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (4 preceding siblings ...)
2022-10-06 4:46 ` [ruby-core:110192] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
@ 2022-10-18 15:56 ` st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-10-19 3:37 ` [ruby-core:110416] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
` (6 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) @ 2022-10-18 15:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
File Screenshot 2022-10-18 at 15.25.36.png added
If we want to establish naming convention based on terminal apps, I think I'd pick `iTerm2` as the reference because 1) its very popular and 2) it allows more customisation than `Terminal.app`:
And if we use its naming convention for the 4 colours, they'll be:
- Default items' foreground color: `foreground_color`
- Default items' background color: `background_color`
- Highlighted items' foreground color: `selected_text_color`
- Highlighted items' background color: `selection_color`
> If auto-completion and documentation are implemented differently by SHOW_DOC_DIALOG and DEFAULT_DIALOG_PROC_AUTOCOMPLETE, why don't you just separate color configs for those two things
That's a good point. I guess we can just expose colour options at [`DialogRenderInfo` level](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/master/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L411), like
```rb
DialogRenderInfo.new(
pos: Reline::CursorPos.new(x, y),
contents: contents,
width: width,
foreground_color: :white,
background_color: :black,
selected_text_color: :black,
selection_color: :white
)
```
Then we can avoid having a top-level config that may be hard to name in the future.
But then we also need to think of a way to pass them to `DEFAULT_DIALOG_PROC_AUTOCOMPLETE` because it [locates inside `reline`](https://github.com/ruby/reline/blob/aeead48f1cdffbb0d5ca392ac13a7d5a7b9a3f88/lib/reline.rb#L234-L280) and it's not patchable.
Given that `reline` already exposes several completion-specific configs, like
```rb
Reline.completion_append_character = nil
Reline.completer_quote_characters = ''
Reline.completion_proc = IRB::InputCompletor::CompletionProc
```
Do you think it'd make sense to have one for the colours too? For example:
```rb
Reline.completier_colors = {
foreground_color: :white,
background_color: :black,
selected_text_color: :black,
selection_color: :white
}
```
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99720
* 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:
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:
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)
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110416] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (5 preceding siblings ...)
2022-10-18 15:56 ` [ruby-core:110408] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
@ 2022-10-19 3:37 ` k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-10-31 12:24 ` [ruby-core:110560] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
` (5 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) @ 2022-10-19 3:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun).
> And if we use its naming convention for the 4 colours, they'll be:
> Default items' foreground color: foreground_color
> Default items' background color: background_color
> Highlighted items' foreground color: selected_text_color
> Highlighted items' background color: selection_color
Sounds good. I think it'd be also fair to make the APIs a bit more consistent by using `selection_foreground_color` and `selection_background_color`, but then you'll lose consistency with iTerm2 a little and the names end up being longer.
> Do you think it'd make sense to have one for the colours too?
Yes, it seems easier to configure than `DialogRenderInfo`. As to `completion` vs `completer`, `git grep` in the IRB repository seems to suggest that "completion" is used more commonly throughout the repository, so I'd use `completion_colors`. At least `completier` seems like a typo of `completer`.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99728
* 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:
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:
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)
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110560] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (6 preceding siblings ...)
2022-10-19 3:37 ` [ruby-core:110416] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
@ 2022-10-31 12:24 ` st0012 (Stan Lo)
2022-11-02 4:56 ` [ruby-core:110577] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
` (4 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) @ 2022-10-31 12:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
> > Do you think it'd make sense to have one for the colours too?
>
> Yes, it seems easier to configure than `DialogRenderInfo`. As to `completion` vs `completer`, `git grep` in the IRB repository seems to suggest that "completion" is used more commonly throughout the repository, so I'd use `completion_colors`. At least `completier` seems like a typo of `completer`.
Yes `completier` was a typo. I've corrected it.
I did a quick search and it looks like `completer_*` methods, `completer_word_break_characters` and `completer_quote_characters`, were added for compatibility with `Readline`. So I agree that we should go with `completion_colors` instead.
### To summarize the current consensus:
1. The 4 colour options will be named as the following to match `iTerm2`'s naming convention:
* Default items' foreground color: `foreground_color`
* Default items' background color: `background_color`
* Highlighted items' foreground color: `selected_text_color`
* Highlighted items' background color: `selection_color`
2. The colour options will be added to
1. The [DialogRenderInfo level](https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/master/lib/irb/input-method.rb#L411)
```rb
DialogRenderInfo.new(
pos: Reline::CursorPos.new(x, y),
contents: contents,
width: width,
foreground_color: :white,
background_color: :black,
selected_text_color: :black,
selection_color: :white
)
```
2. And a new completion-specific API
```rb
Reline.completion_colors = {
foreground_color: :white,
background_color: :black,
selected_text_color: :black,
selection_color: :white
}
```
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99889
* 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:
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:
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)
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110577] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (7 preceding siblings ...)
2022-10-31 12:24 ` [ruby-core:110560] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
@ 2022-11-02 4:56 ` k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
2022-11-17 6:16 ` [ruby-core:110788] " hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)
` (3 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun) @ 2022-11-02 4:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun).
Nice summary. This seems like a solid proposal.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-99911
* 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:
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:
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)
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:110788] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (8 preceding siblings ...)
2022-11-02 4:56 ` [ruby-core:110577] " k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)
@ 2022-11-17 6:16 ` hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)
2022-11-29 16:44 ` [ruby-core:111072] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
` (2 subsequent siblings)
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA) @ 2022-11-17 6:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA).
I'm +1 to https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#note-8 basically.
>And a new completion-specific API
```ruby
Reline.completion_colors = {
foreground_color: :white,
background_color: :black,
selected_text_color: :black,
selection_color: :white
}
```
```...colors = { ..._color: ...}``` is a little of redundant. Can we use like this?
```ruby
Reline.completion_colors = {
foreground: :white,
background: :black,
selected_text: :black,
selection: :white
}
```
Note: This suggestion is not strong opinion.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-100138
* 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:
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:
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)
--
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:111072] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (9 preceding siblings ...)
2022-11-17 6:16 ` [ruby-core:110788] " hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)
@ 2022-11-29 16:44 ` st0012 (Stan Lo)
2023-06-13 12:08 ` [ruby-core:113896] " hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core
2023-11-11 9:16 ` [ruby-core:115345] " st0012 (Stan Lo) via ruby-core
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) @ 2022-11-29 16:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA) wrote in #note-10:
>
> ```ruby
> Reline.completion_colors = {
> foreground: :white,
> background: :black,
> selected_text: :black,
> selection: :white
> }
> ```
I agree that `color` postfix is a bit redundant. But I still lean *slightly* toward having it because it makes passing values easier:
```rb
DialogRenderInfo.new(
pos: Reline::CursorPos.new(x, y),
contents: contents,
width: width,
**Reline.completion_colors
)
```
And when doing so, users get errors when they have typos or unsupported attributes in their `Reline.completion_colors`, for example.
But I'll take either one decided in the dev meeting.
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-100332
* 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:
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:
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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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:113896] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (10 preceding siblings ...)
2022-11-29 16:44 ` [ruby-core:111072] " st0012 (Stan Lo)
@ 2023-06-13 12:08 ` hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core
2023-11-11 9:16 ` [ruby-core:115345] " st0012 (Stan Lo) via ruby-core
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core @ 2023-06-13 12:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core; +Cc: hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi)
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:
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:
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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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread* [ruby-core:115345] [Ruby master Feature#18996] Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
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)
` (11 preceding siblings ...)
2023-06-13 12:08 ` [ruby-core:113896] " hasumikin (hitoshi hasumi) via ruby-core
@ 2023-11-11 9:16 ` st0012 (Stan Lo) via ruby-core
12 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: st0012 (Stan Lo) via ruby-core @ 2023-11-11 9:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: ruby-core; +Cc: st0012 (Stan Lo)
Issue #18996 has been updated by st0012 (Stan Lo).
@hasumikin proposed a more powerful and mature design and it has been merged. So I think both this and #19010 can be closed :-)
----------------------------------------
Feature #18996: Proposal: Introduce new APIs to reline for changing dialog UI colours
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18996#change-105270
* 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:
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:
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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