Re: [Lynx-dev] Re: not setting background in lynx.lss when using--enable-default-colors

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> writes:

  > On Wed, 12 Dec 2007, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > 
  > > This is an incorrect analogy so irrelevant to the discussion at hand:
  > > this is not something that has recently changed in lynx.
  > 
  > 2005-06-02 (2.8.6dev.12)
  > * modify ".lss" files to work equally well on terminals setup with white 
text
  >   on black background, or the reverse.  This also required fixing a few 
places
  >   in LYsubwindow() and curses_w_style() to make window backgrounds use the
  >   colors given in the ".lss" default- and normal-colors lines -TD

OK, so it's not so recent, I only saw this in Fedora 7 and had to hack
lynx.lss to work around it.

  > ...and my comment in lynx.lss:
  > 
  > # Setting the normal and default types lets us keep (almost) the same colors
  > # whether the terminal's default colors are white-on-black or 
black-on-white.
  > # It is not exact since the default "white" is not necessarily the same 
color
  > # as the ANSI lightgray, but is as close as we can get in a standard way.
  > #
  > # If you really want the terminal's default colors, and if lynx is built 
using
  > # ncurses' default-color support, remove these two lines:
  > normal:         normal:                 lightgray:black
  > default:        normal:                 white:black
  > 
  > ...noting that the default "lynx.lss" was designed for a black background.

... and that forces the default to by white-on-black

  > > Well, then a better solution would be to not use colors that don't have
  > > good contrast on either a black background or a white background.
  > > Changing the default to black does not seem such a good idea just for
  > > that reason.  AFAIK all major X terminal emulators default to have white
  > > background, and no other terminal application defaults to have a dark
  > > background, so lynx changing the default to have a black background
  > > is very strange.
  > 
  > Debian defaults to white-on-black.  Also, of course, most console
  > emulators use white-on-black.

Well, then Debian is an exception, the vast majority of systems don't
default to white-on-black, and console emulators are much less used than
terminal emulator. 
Anyway, this is just to state that IMHO it was a mistake to change the
default to white-on-black, BUT that is NOT the reason I started this
thread. 

My original suggestion is that its very like to be possible to support both
black-on-white and white-on-black by just removing 2 lines in
lynx.lss. You said that yellow on white does not look good, then using
another color instead of yellow could be a good option. 
Ideally, it would be great if the color scheme was chosen depending on
the background...

Thanks

        --dan