can zsh set background color?

can zsh set background color?

[Timothy Luoma]

I don't suspect this is possible, but I thought I'd ask.

Is there any way for zsh to set the background color of my terminal 
program?

I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be 
handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it 
was the one where I was connected to X

TjL
Zsh 4.1.1 on Mac OS X

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Mads Martin Joergensen]

* Timothy Luoma <lists@tntluoma.com> [Jan 04. 2005 16:18]:
> 
> I don't suspect this is possible, but I thought I'd ask.
> 
> Is there any way for zsh to set the background color of my terminal 
> program?
> 
> I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be 
> handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it 
> was the one where I was connected to X

I've the following .termcolors file which I source in .zshrc. It makes
it easy to do such. Be careful to get the escape codes right.

http://mmj.dk/conffiles/termcolors

-- 
Mads Martin Joergensen, http://mmj.dk
"Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic
 and totally illogical, with just a little bit more effort?"
                                -- A. P. J.

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Bart Schaefer]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Timothy Luoma wrote:

> Is there any way for zsh to set the background color of my terminal 
> program?

Depends on what the program is, but probably not.  From the shell you can 
set the attributes of the text that is displayed (which is what MMJ is 
getting at in his reply) but not the color of the entire terminal.

> I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be 
> handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it 
> was the one where I was connected to X

[I wrote everything that follows while thinking "connected to X" meant 
"connected using an X11 terminal emulator", but now I think it means "to 
the host named X" so this may all be irrelevant.  Having written it down,
though, I'm going to send it anyway.]

This is really an X11 question, and it depends on how you run your 
terminal emulators, but I'll do my best to turn it into a zsh question
anyway.  Let's assume xterm for discussion.

If you run xterm locally and invoke the remote login from xterm, then you
have to do something like this:

---- 8< ----
typeset -A xterm_colors
xterm_colors=( host1 red
               host2 blue
               host3 green )
function xterm {
  setopt localoptions extendedglob noksharrays nokshglob

  # Fast crude command line parsing here, could be better
  if [[ " $*" = [[:space:]]-(fg|foreground) ]]
  then
    command xterm "$@"
  else
    local rshell='(ssh|rlogin|telnet)'
    local userpat='(|*@|-l[[:space:]][^[:space:]]#[[:space:]])'
    local remotepat="* -e ${rshell} ${userpat}(#b)([^[:space:]@]#)*"

    local color=white
    if [[ " $*" = ${~remotepat} && -n "${xterm_colors[${match[1]}]}" ]]
    then
      color=${xterm_colors[${match[1]}]}
    fi
    command xterm -fg $color "$@"
  fi
}
---- 8< ----

However, if you instead run "xon host xterm ..." or the equivalent, then
you can just put an appropriate X resource file, e.g. one named XTerm, in 
your home directory on the remote machine, and set the foreground color in
that file.

(Unless you have the same NFS-mounted home directory everywhere, in which
case you're back to the first plan.)

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Timothy Luoma]

On Jan 4, 2005, at 11:55 AM, Bart Schaefer wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Timothy Luoma wrote:
>
>> I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be
>> handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it
>> was the one where I was connected to X
>
> [I wrote everything that follows while thinking "connected to X" meant
> "connected using an X11 terminal emulator", but now I think it means 
> "to
> the host named X" so this may all be irrelevant.  Having written it 
> down,
> though, I'm going to send it anyway.]

Sorry, I did indeed mean "X" as in $X not X Windows.

That said, I'm trying to learn more about X Windows, and this will be 
helpful.

TjL

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Timothy Luoma]

On Jan 4, 2005, at 10:20 AM, Mads Martin Joergensen wrote:

>> I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be
>> handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it
>> was the one where I was connected to X
>
> I've the following .termcolors file which I source in .zshrc. It makes
> it easy to do such. Be careful to get the escape codes right.
>
> http://mmj.dk/conffiles/termcolors

Bart correctly spotted my sloppy typing when I said "X" I meant "some 
computer"

I am using the Terminal program in Mac OS X, not X Windows.

TjL

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Drew Perttula]

> Is there any way for zsh to set the background color of my terminal 
> program?
> 
> I'm often logged into to 3 different computers (ssh), and it would be 
> handy to be able to quickly look for the color of one to know that it 
> was the one where I was connected to X
> 
> TjL
> Zsh 4.1.1 on Mac OS X
> 

As has been discussed, you'll need a terminal program that accepts escape
codes to change the background color. But if you find that, you might be
interested in my solution, which is to hash the hostname and generate
a color from the result. I get a probably-different background color
every time I connect to a new host.

My code is on http://zshwiki.org/WishList and repeated here:

# tint the terminal for each host
bgcolor=`hostname | md5sum | /usr/local/bin/python -c "c1=raw_input(); col=[int(c1[x:x+2],16) for x in 0,2,4]; print '#%02x%02x%02x'%tuple([40*x/max(col) for x in col])"`
print "\x1b]49;$bgcolor\x07"

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Bart Schaefer]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Drew Perttula wrote:

> bgcolor=`hostname | md5sum | /usr/local/bin/python -c "c1=raw_input(); col=[int(c1[x:x+2],16) for x in 0,2,4]; print '#%02x%02x%02x'%tuple([40*x/max(col) for x in col])"`

Pipe to python?  Why?

setbgcolor() {
  local c1=$(hostname | md5sum) max x
  local -a col
  for x in 0 2 4; do col+=$[16#$c1[x+1,x+2]]; done
  max=${${(On)col}[1]}
  print -n "\x1b]49;#"
  for x in $col; do printf %02x $[40*x/max]; done
  print -n "\x07"
}

Re: can zsh set background color?

[lists]

I'm personally content with a different colored prompt for remote 
machines.  This is taken care of in my .zshrc file with something like 
this pseudo code:

case ${HOST} in
   (host1) PS1=<substitute your favorite prompt here> ;;
   (host2) PS1=<different colored prompt here> ;;
esac

I don't want to take the focus of this discussion off of zsh, but if 
you're using OS X and Terminal, you can set up a Terminal window to 
have the characteristics that you like (i.e. color of background), then 
save it as a .term file which you launch only when you want to ssh to a 
particular host.  You can even set it so that just by launching a 
particular .term file, the ssh command will be carried out for you.  
Details here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86134
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152410
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152408

Hope this helps.



On Jan 4, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Timothy Luoma wrote:
> I am using the Terminal program in Mac OS X, not X Windows.
>
> TjL
>

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Timothy Luoma]

On Jan 5, 2005, at 8:46 PM, lists wrote:

> I don't want to take the focus of this discussion off of zsh, but if 
> you're using OS X and Terminal, you can set up a Terminal window to 
> have the characteristics that you like (i.e. color of background), 
> then save it as a .term file which you launch only when you want to 
> ssh to a particular host.  You can even set it so that just by 
> launching a particular .term file, the ssh command will be carried out 
> for you.  Details here:

Many thanks for that.  That gets me pretty far along.  One remaining 
thing I want to accomplish is to set colors specifically for when I'm 
logged in as root (something subtle like a BRIGHT RED BACKGROUND and a 
flashing prompt saying YOU ARE ROOT!)

However, I am starting to use 'sudo' instead of logging in as root, so 
that's probably a moot point now.

Thanks for the pointers on the .term files, that's a good solution for 
the time being.

TjL

Re: can zsh set background color?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen]

Timothy Luoma <lists@tntluoma.com> writes:

> One remaining thing I want to accomplish is to set colors specifically
> for when I'm logged in as root (something subtle like a BRIGHT RED
> BACKGROUND and a flashing prompt saying YOU ARE ROOT!)

My zsh-configs really has such prompt that distinguish root shells from
luser shells very well.

http://iki.fi/juhtolv/configs/shellrc/


-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * http colon slash slash iki dot fi slash juhtolv
"sinun kauneutesi kaataa valtakuntia. minun pimeyteni raiskaa runoutta." CMX

Re: can zsh set background color?

[David Gómez]

Hi Juhapekka ;),

> > One remaining thing I want to accomplish is to set colors specifically
> > for when I'm logged in as root (something subtle like a BRIGHT RED
> > BACKGROUND and a flashing prompt saying YOU ARE ROOT!)

I have this on my /etc/zshenv:

if [[ $USERNAME == root ]]; then
    export PS1=$'[%n@%m] %{\e[0;35m%}[%~] %{\e[0m%}%# '
else
    export PS1=$'[%n@%m] %{\e[0;32m%}[%~] %{\e[0m%}%# '
fi

But it only sets the foreground color. You'll need to put another
escape sequence to change the background too.

regards,

-- 
David Gómez                                      Jabber ID: davidge@jabber.org