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Date:      Tue, 04 Jul 2000 01:41:15 -0700 (PDT)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Doug Barton <DougB@gorean.org>
Cc:        Brian Fundakowski Feldman <green@FreeBSD.ORG>, Sean Lutner <sean@rentul.net>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: ls -G seems to depend on TERM=xterm-color
Message-ID:  <200007040841.BAA40774@john.baldwin.cx>
In-Reply-To: <39619CE9.F0D168FA@gorean.org>

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On 04-Jul-00 Doug Barton wrote:
> John Baldwin wrote:
> 
>> >> XTerm*termName: xterm-color
>> >
>> >       Ok, that's a good solution, I was just using .bashrc. My point is not
>> > so much why, but that it be properly documented. Do you want to handle
>> > the update of the ls man page, or do you want me to PR a patch?
>> 
>> Umm, honestly, this shouldn't be all that non-obvious.  Do you expect
>> ls -G to work on a monochrome monitor?  Of course not. :P  The xterm
>> termcap is by default a monochrome terminal.  sysinstall doesn't have
>> color in an xterm either w/ term=xterm.
> 
>       This is obvious to you and me, but to a newer user it's not going to be
> obvious at all. There is going to be a bunch of people who write into
> the mailing lists wondering why they aren't seeing the colorized ls in
> their xterms.

Well, then you are going to have to document this for every single color
program people might want to run in an xterm. :)  Seriously, educating the
users on termcap will probably be a more productive way of going about this.
One way of doing this might be to add a FAQ entry along the lines of
"Programs such as ls(1) and sysinstall(8) don't display color in my xterm
or other terminal?"

--

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/


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