Re: color prompt

[Adam Spiers <adam@spiers.net>]

Matt Garman (garman@uiuc.edu) wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 06, 1999 at 12:51:48AM +0000, Adam Spiers wrote:
> > Matt Garman (garman@uiuc.edu) wrote:
> > > Is there any way I can colorize my zsh prompt?
> > The latest development versions of zsh 3.1.6 have a themeable prompt
> > system with plenty of (ahem) nice colours.  Even if you don't want to
> > use a bleeding edge version, the relevant shell-scripts should serve
> > as examples of how to get colours in your prompt.
> > For information on where to get the latest development versions, and
> > very brief instructions on how to use the prompt theme system, see:
>
> I have zsh 3.1.6 installed, but I don't have the promptinit function in
> my distrib.  Does that mean, then, that there are different versions of
> 3.1.6?  How do I know which 3.1.6 is the newest in that case?

An `echo $ZSH_VERSION' will always give you a clue as to
(approximately) which version you are using.

There are many versions of 3.1.6 floating around:

  3.1.6        -- The last official development version.  There have
                  been many MANY improvements since this; if you don't
                  mind using unstable versions, you might as well reap
                  the many benefits of using one of the versions below
                  instead of this one:

  3.1.6-pws-x  -- Official intermediate development versions compiled
                  by Peter Stephenson (pws) from selected patches from
                  zsh-workers.  Sometimes released once a week,
                  sometimes less often.

  3.1.6-bart-y -- "Intermediate intermediate" releases from Bart
                  Schaefer, to make developer's lives easier while pws
                  was away.

  3.1.6-cvs    -- Public CVS repository maintained by Tanaka Akira.  The
                  intermediate releases above are always merged into
                  the main branch, so this source tree represents the
                  current development tree the closest on average.


If you were to put them on a scale, it would be something like this:


    3.x.y, x even    3.x.y, x odd    intermediate devel      tanaka-cvs
    (e.g. 3.0.7)     (e.g. 3.1.6)    releases (pws, bart)

  <---------------------------------------------------------------------->

    least often released /                          most often released /
    most stable                                     most bleeding edge   


See the URL I mentioned before for where to get these in various formats:

  http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/~adam/computing/zsh/

> In the mean time, I tried putting something like this in my ~/.zshrc file:
>
> fg_black="$(echo -n '\e[1;30m')"

As you'll notice if you look at Functions/Misc/colors from once of the
recent development versions (not 3.1.6 pure), this could be written
as:

  fg_black=$'\e[1;30m'

Your cursor positioning question has already been answered elsewhere.

Adam