Zugg Software :: View topic - CMUD feature request

GURU Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 1958 Location: Canada

Been popping in and out of muds and one thing that drives me crazy is the poor ANSI implementation.

Many smaug/smaug derivatives are still plagued with the off white color.

in* ( 739) 01/23/08 16:36:27:421 : <ESC>[0;1;37mYou may choose a number from the list of colors below.<LF><CR><LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m0<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[36mCyan<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m1<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[34mblue <ESC>[m<ESC>[36m2<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[31mBright red<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m3<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[31mDark red <ESC>[36m4<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[32mBright green<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m5<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[32mDark green <ESC>[36m6<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[37mBright white<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m7<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[34mDark blue <ESC>[36m8<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[36mAquamarine<LF><CR>
9<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[mOff-white <ESC>[36m10<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[33mYellow<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m11<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[33mOrange <ESC>[36m12<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[35mPink<LF><CR>
<ESC>[m<ESC>[36m13<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[35mPurple <ESC>[36m14<ESC>[m<ESC>[1;30m - Grey<LF><CR>
<ESC>[37mtextcolor <# of desired color><LF><CR><LF><CR>

I've narrowed it down to <ESC>[1;30m - <ESC>[m<ESC>[mOff-white

Anyway we can be able to toggle the handling of <ESC>[m in the ANSI preferences as well as the others? I doubt the muds will change it. Some mud clients follow the weird sequence, zMud/Cmud properly adhere and therefore color it with the default choice(usually a light green) and not offwhite.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 6:05 pm

The ESC[m ANSI sequence is the same as the ESC[0m ANSI reset sequence. In CMUD, this causes the default color choice to be used, as you mentioned. I'm not sure what you mean by "toggling" this. Just set your default color to off-white if you want it to match. But I'm not really sure what you are asking me to do.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:26 pm

Probably to set the default colour to be off-white as it's always seemed odd to me that it was green since if you use telnet to connect you get off-white not green.

GURU Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 1958 Location: Canada

Indeed. Maybe by default the default color should be off-white.

Most other clients must then use off white as a reset\default color as we get many complaints about that color by zMud and cMud users.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:38 pm

Well, anyone can change the text style to be anything they want, so I'm not sure there is much need.

The green color comes from the original VT100 terminals, and many old MUDs were set up for the green-on-black color. Later terminals used the off-white color, and yes, I know that many other clients use off-white for the default. But the ANSI standard doesn't actually indicate what the default color should be as far as I can tell. I'm probably just showing my age since most of my VT100 terminal usage was with the original green-on-black models in the 80's.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:52 pm

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 9:01 pm

While I'm normally a proponent of leaving trivial things well alone (there're likely people out there who prefer green), I have to agree; I much prefer white to green. Many MUDs actually colour all their text, even stuff that's just a generic colour, so it comes out white anyway - having starting MUDding on MUDs that did that, now whenever I play one that doesn't, I have to change the setting.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:35 pm

Well, this opens a "can of worms" actually. Because Windows users are probably used to software that maintains their Windows color settings (black text on white background by default) like in Notepad. But I think most MUDs are designed for a black background. So maybe just changing the default color from green to off-white would be good enough.

But really, I just with MUDs would fix themselves to not assume a particular default color, since assuming off-white as the default really does violate the ANSI standard. But this is just me dreaming since some MUDs can't even figure out the proper Newline for the Telnet protocol.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

I myself don't consider this a problem at all. I find both the off white and the green color schemes to be horrid :P

I always change my default text color to something like the dark cyan in zMUD, or in CMUD I was doing a different color for every character (helped me know what character I was on without even thinking about it).

Still, I don't see why it should be changed. I've never had anyone on the MUD I'm an admin on, the MUD I played, OR the MUD I own, complain about zMUD/CMUD's default text color. In point of fact, I've had several ask me how to change GMUD to have the same color scheme of green on black.

And yes Zugg, you're showing your age :D I've not seen a VT100 terminal since I was 6 or 7 lol.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:54 pm

Hah, yes. Ultimately, this is all irrelevant anyway - not all MUDs do it, and for those that does, it's a 5-second fix, even if you're a clueless newbie.

I personally hate that black-on-white "piece of paper" text layout. Looking at a white screen is like staring at a lightbulb. I'm so glad that the default in z/CMUD is a more eyeball-friendly black - I've been known to play MUDs for 14 hours at a time sometimes and my eyes need all the help they can get (-6.5ish dioptres ^_^).

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

I very much agree on the Black on White... UGH!

In CMUD I found a certain Blue on Black, Purple on Black, and a few others very appealing. I'm just not sure exactly WHAT shades :D And I can't look till I buy my CMUD license. I do use a few colors in zMUD too, but since it's palette is so much more limited lol!

Adept Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 246

Actually, I'm fairly certain that VT100s used white on black. Wyse's were either green or amber on black. ADDS were black on white, and caps only--that was in the day when even hardwired terminals were only 300 baud at my school :)

But honestly, I'm not sure if it's obvious how to change the default permanently for the text colors. It took me some playing to figure it out myself.

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:47 pm

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 6:13 pm

Ooooh, does this mean the next default.pkg will be off-white then? Twisted Evil

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:02 pm

Well yes, that's the direction that I'm leaning towards based upon this feedback.

Adept Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 246

My college had real VT100s given we had a DECsystem-10, then 20. I could swear they were all white on black :)

But in any case, I think the better solution is to make it trivial for a user to choose the default. I'm sure that if after the next update, people's screens change color, you'll hear complaints too...

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:37 pm

Well, the trick will be to change it in a way that doesn't effect the existing sessions that people have.

What I am thinking of is to make the Default Packages something that you *can* change and is not overwritten by future upgrades. So it's on the list for me to think about, but I don't know if it will make it into the next version or not.

GURU Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 1958 Location: Canada

I just smashed into 36 smaug or smaug derivative places, if they don't have samson's snippet properly implemented the default color is expected as white. This can be determined from either a textcolor, color or the newbie academy using #DEBUGFILE.

I vote for white as the default for the non-conpliant muds which are too numerous to count.

Novice Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 45

we had green on black vt100 terminals and orange on black terminals when i went to uni in 1995 still, so i understand the green on black starting color all to well... :)

GURU Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 1958 Location: Canada

Probably green phosphorous was cheaper. Terminals from 80 onwards were green on black. Amber showed up around the Apple days. The Trash-80 was green on black as well.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

/sits firmly in the green-screen camp

off-white is so harsh on the eyes, especially at like 3am :p

maybe part of the setup wizard can be "choose colour scheme" and have a preview of the various defaults..
- ansi off-white
- zmud classic (green)
- windows black on white

you're right, that most muds won't change their poor ansi implementation, for "highlighted" text, its best just to call the ansi highlight sequence with no base colour specified, that way someone with green will get bright green, someone with off-white will get bright white, and someone with brown will get... hrm, lets just not go there

but there's so many mud devs out there who don't pay attention to detail, if it looks good on their screen, then everyone else can use the same settings or go jump!