Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!umix!umich!mibte!twh
From: twh@mibte.UUCP (Tim Hitchcock)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Re: Color CURSES?
Message-ID: <2565@mibte.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 88 14:33:51 GMT
References: <4186@cup.portal.com> <7587@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Michigan Bell Telephone Company
Lines: 27
Summary: COLOR CURSES

In article <7587@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP writes:
> In article <4186@cup.portal.com> Jeffrey_J_Vanepps@cup.portal.com writes:
> >Does anyone have any pointers to a version of curses/termcap (or terminfo)
> >that will support different colors and different video modes? What I'm
> >looking for is something that will allow me to say "this word in green,
> >this one in red, this one highlighted, this one blinking, etc." all on
> >the same screen.
> 
> Curses is dependent on terminal attributes described in the termcap
> or terminfo data base, and as of 4.3BSD and SVR3.0, neither provides
> a (standard) way to specify colors.  Both provide for describing
> modes such as reverse-video, bold, blink, underscore, dim, invisible,
> and protected.  See the appropriate manual entry.
> 
> It sounds like you really need a forms interface, not curses.


COLOR CURSES is supported in SVR3.2 terminfo. There will be a version 
for SVR3.1 too.  ANSI has a standard for COLOR ANSI terminals.

example of terminfo shell level use (COLOR/NUMBER definitions may not be exact):

	tput setf 1   # set foreground color to red
	tput setb 2   # set background color to blue
	tput setb 5   # set background color to yellow

Note that COLORs are represented by numbers, not names.