Re: colorls in base

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 09:47:37PM +0100, Kamil Rytarowski wrote:
> 
> Colors nowadays are industry standard and increase readability.

Your unqualified statement is objectively false.

How do you know that the user's terminal isn't using the same
color -- or all too close to it -- for background as you've chosen
to use as syntax highlighting for directories?  Oops!  I guess I
didn't need to read any directory names at all.

I am *not* opposed to highlighting when ls (or vi, or...) is outputting
to a terminal.  I *am* opposed to the use of hardwired colors as
"highlights".  That practice is discriminatory against the color-blind
and also punishes those who (horrors) have chosen some background color
for their terminals from personal preference.

Among the worst offenders in this regard is vim, where on a properly
color-calibrated monitor with the terminal emulator set to a true
black background, dark blue is used for syntax highlighting, a blue
so dark it's basically unreadable.

Use abstract properties for highlighting syntax all you like -- bold,
reverse video, italic, underline, heck, make the text blink if you
have to.  Modern terminals let users map those to colors if they
choose anyway.

But please, don't pick some colors that look nice on *your* terminal
and inflict them on everyone else.

Thanks.

Thor